by Rick Barba
“Yes!” said Glorak, excited. He slung off his pack and slid a sterile plant trowel from a side sleeve. “They obviously grow with great speed. If we can get one of the smaller samples under the microscope at base camp immediately, we may be able to record some of the cellular growth.”
Kirk just stared at the nearest organism. He took a few steps closer to it.
Meanwhile, the others were following the Delta game plan. Marcus locked his camera atop a titanium tripod and opened its legs wide.
“I’ll overlay the collection grid while you guys snip samples,” he said.
Meanwhile, Raynor was checking his plan notes. “Okay, we’ll need images and samples of primary organ structures from a healthy, mature specimen,” he said. He unsheathed his laser pruning shears and stepped toward one of the taller plants. “This one looks good and strong.”
Next to him, Braxim began to pull out plastic specimen bags. “You snip, I’ll collect,” he said to Raynor.
As all of this was going on around Kirk, he watched silently. His mind was racing.
“Hey, stop!” he said suddenly.
All four of his team members stopped and looked at him.
Kirk stepped toward the mature plant that Raynor had been about to cut a sample from. “This plant looks familiar,” he said.
Raynor shrugged. “So?”
Kirk pulled out his e-pad and tapped the screen a few times. He held it out toward Raynor.
“Check it out, man,” he said.
Four windows were opened on-screen. Each displayed an image of a different plant specimen they’d studied higher up in the Tanika Station bowl. All four species were now visible as organ systems integrated on the new plant growing on the bank.
The other cadets examined the images.
“Wow,” said Marcus. “This is a superplant.”
“These other species must be migrating downstream and combining somehow,” said Glorak.
“Yes,” said Braxim. “They’re definitely merging together into more complex structures.”
“I don’t like the word structures,” said Kirk. “Let’s call them bodies with organs, shall we? Because that’s what they are.”
“What a discovery!” said Glorak. He held up his trowel. “We must dig out a sample.” Then he leaned closer to Kirk and whispered, “Dissection and learning its recombinant mechanisms could be the key to winning this scenario, Jim.”
Kirk shook his head. “No. Wait,” he said. “All we did was follow a path. Any fool could make that so-called discovery. If the Science mission final is that simple, I’m sure even Viktor Tikhonov passes with flying colors.”
“So what are you saying?” asked Raynor. “You think these plants are intelligent? Because they sure don’t look like it.”
“Neither do you,” said Kirk, “but we don’t just chop you up into lab samples.”
“Jim, it’s just a plant,” protested Glorak. “You eat vegetables, do you not?”
“Guys, look around,” said Kirk. “What’s the basic dynamic of this ecosystem? So far it’s entities of lower complexity combining into entities of higher complexity.” Kirk gestured toward the big, complex plant. “Does that look like a vegetable? And do you think all this recombinant magic stops with him? We’ve only been here three hours! In three more hours, this plant might evolve into Viktor Tikhonov.”
The group continued to look skeptical.
“But then it would be a vegetable,” said Marcus, breaking the tension.
Kirk laughed. “Look, all I’m saying is this: If we take our samples, what further development have we stopped? And what are we killing in the process of collecting samples?”
Raynor just stared at his laser shears with intensity. He was itching to collect samples.
“I know your story, Kirk,” he said. “We all do.”
Kirk turned to Raynor. This was it, he knew: The moment your crew goes with you or not. There are moments where command is won or lost. Kirk felt it here. And there was no formula to follow. Just your gut.
“What’s up, Raynor?” he asked.
“Most of your life, Starfleet was the last place you wanted to be,” said Raynor. “But me, I’ve wanted to be a starship bridge officer since I was six years old.” He glanced over at the others. “What if he’s wrong, guys? What if that’s just a dumb plant, and we fail our Science mission final because of some ridiculous tree-hugging theory?” Raynor rubbed furiously at his head. He was getting very agitated.
Kirk looked at the lake; it was as smooth as a mirror. He took a deep breath. He knew he was right and Raynor was wrong. But Raynor’s point was valid, and he needed to be dealt with in a way that wouldn’t alienate him. He tried to think from Raynor’s perspective. What did he know about him? The guy was obsessive about detail in lab sciences. Cadets hated being his partner for lab work because he was never satisfied with results. Kirk knew how to proceed.
“What are you trying to say?” Kirk asked, looking him straight in the eyes.
“I’m not saying anything, Captain,” said Raynor.
Kirk nodded. “I just don’t want to be a sloppy scientist. I don’t want to make critical mistakes because I hurried when I didn’t have to. Let’s just take a step back here, okay?”
Raynor’s eyes widened, but he didn’t speak.
“This basin down here,” said Kirk, “this silt, the lake—it’s different. It’s special. We all feel it. It’s some kind of broth of life.” He held out his arm. “But it’s still outside our normal frame of reference.”
Braxim folded his arms. “Maybe we should stop thinking of this place as a science test,” he said.
Kirk nodded. “See, I think we unconsciously assume that whoever built Tanika Station must be guys who look like us,” he said, gesturing around him. “But if this was an actual alien worldlet, maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they’d look like him.” He pointed at the plant. “This guy might be the creator, for all we’d know right now. Or at least a link to the creator’s mind.”
Raynor stepped up to the gnarled plant. “I guess I just don’t see it,” he said.
“Look, I’m not saying you’re wrong, Jack,” said Kirk. “I’m just saying, no careless science. Let’s stick with nonintrusive methods for a while . . . you know, before we start cutting up our hosts right here in their living room.”
Raynor thought, and finally nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
“Cool,” said Kirk.
It was then that Kirk had his first insight into the mind of the Doctor prowling the city fog miles below.
He’s an alien in a place he doesn’t understand yet.
He’s a scientist.
And his research is sloppy.
Meanwhile, Marcus resumed his photography. He rotated the camera thirty degrees at a time atop the tall, slender tripod to lock in images of the surrounding specimen grid. As the strobe flashed rapidly, Kirk squinted again at its dazzling brightness. He noted the tall, slender shape formed by the three tripod legs: an elongated pyramid with lightning pulsing at the top. He’d seen it before, walking down Columbus Avenue with Hannah.
Those flashes atop the Transamerica Pyramid were alien imaging scans of the city.
Somebody was up there shooting a grid overlay of San Francisco, he thought. For their specimen-collection activity.
Suddenly the interior of Tanika Station was pierced by the loud, throbbing, intermittent wail of a siren. All activity froze as Team Delta gazed up at the sound source somewhere on the station ceiling.
Kirk’s communicator beeped. He flipped it open.
“Kirk here,” he said.
“Delta, this is Mission Control,” replied the voice of Commander Stetmann. There was an edge to his voice that hadn’t been present in the mission briefing. “We have a situation.”
Now a deep, metallic groan echoed from the far wall of the bowl. It overwhelmed the pulsing wail of the siren.
“What’s going on, Commander?” Kirk shouted over the noise.
“Sen
sors indicate a station hull breach,” replied Stetmann.
Kirk hesitated. Was this real . . . or part of the simulation? He looked in the direction of the sound. It didn’t sound simulated.
“Roger that, Control,” said Kirk. “Is it reparable?”
“Negative on that, Delta,” replied Stetmann. “We estimate total hull integrity failure in less than sixty minutes.” There was a pause. Then: “Get your team out of there, Captain. Fast.”
“Acknowledged,” said Kirk. “Kirk out.”
He flipped the communicator shut and turned to his away team.
“Helmets on, gentlemen!” he yelled.
CH.11.12
Pyramid Scheme
As the Gilliam’s retro-thrusters pushed it backward out of Tanika Station’s docking bay, Kirk’s gaze was glued to the shuttle window. He was anxious to see the platform’s exterior hull. He was still unsure what was real and what was simulation.
But before the Gilliam could clear the bay walls, duranium blast shutters slid down over all windows in the shuttle’s passenger cabin.
Impulsively Kirk pulled off his harness and rushed forward into the cockpit. But he arrived just in time to see blast shutters slide down over the cockpit windows as well.
“You might want to buckle up, Captain,” said the pilot.
“Do you know what’s going on out there?” asked Kirk.
“I’ve got orders to get clear fast, so that’s what I’m doing,” said the pilot.
Kirk nodded. He returned to his aisle seat and yanked down the seat harness.
The pilot’s voice came over the cabin speakers.
“Welcome back to the Gilliam,” he said. “This is Captain Spruce, your pilot. Due to the possibility of an imminent explosive decompression of massive force, we’re going to raise our deflector shields. I hope you’re buckled up, gentlemen. If it comes, it will be off the scale. We’ll be accelerating away very fast. Full-scale acceleration coming in five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one.”
And then a g-force of 6.7 plastered Kirk into his seat.
His vision went gray for a few seconds, then black. He felt himself creep up to the very edge of consciousness, but the acceleration halted after about ten seconds. Kirk was disoriented at first, but recovered quickly, as did the other cadets. Then the blast shutters slid open all around the cabin.
Kirk and Raynor, who was buckled into the window seat, both leaned to look out. But Tanika Station was not visible from their angle.
Kirk sank back into his seat. So did Raynor.
“Do you think it really exploded?” asked Kirk.
Raynor shrugged.
“If that station had a catastrophic decompression, they’re going to have a big debris problem downstairs,” said Kirk.
Raynor just looked at him.
Kirk nodded. “Never mind,” he said.
Then they all sat in silence for a long while.
Kirk had plenty of time to wonder if Team Delta would get another shot at a Science mission final. Or had they already failed? Their Phase One observation, mapping, and site-recording activity had been good at least. Or . . . well, maybe not. He had no way to compare Delta’s performance to that of Tikhonov’s Alpha squad.
All Kirk could do was sit and wait.
Uhura entered the office of Dr. Patricia Park, a well-known mathematician and head of the cryptology lab at the college. Dr. Park was sitting at her desk, shuffling papers and muttering to herself. When she spotted Uhura she jumped up and stuck out her hand.
“Patty Park!” she announced.
Uhura stepped forward and shook hands. “Cadet Uhura, Professor,” she said. “It’s an honor.”
“Yes, I’ve heard about you from Spock,” she said loudly.
Uhura was taken aback, but managed to say, “Oh. Well, good things, I hope.”
“Are you kidding me?” blurted Dr. Park. She started laughing. Then she waved a hand. “Anyway, let’s get down to it.” She suddenly ducked out of sight behind her desk.
Uhura stood there, smiling awkwardly. After almost a full minute she said, “Professor?”
Park popped up so quickly Uhura almost screamed.
“Yes, Cadet?”
“Sorry,” said Uhura, bringing a hand to her mouth. “I thought you . . . might need some help.”
“Oh, we all need help,” said Dr. Park.
She looked at Uhura for several seconds.
Uhura smiled uneasily. She was about to speak to break the awkward silence when Dr. Park snapped her fingers and pointed at her.
“Ah, right, you’re the Romulan project,” she said. “Right. I knew that!” There was a knock on the door. “Come in!” she called absently.
Dr. McCoy opened the door and entered the office. As he was about to introduce himself, Dr. Park suddenly dropped out of sight again. McCoy stopped short and frowned at Uhura, who shrugged. But this time Park popped right back up with a folder.
Reaching out his hand, McCoy said, “Professor Park, I’m Dr. Leonard McCoy from the medical college.” Dr. Park shook hands with such great vigor that McCoy almost burst out laughing. He managed to say, “Sorry I’m late. I was in the commandant’s office.” He glanced over at Uhura. “Cadet, your friend Detective Bogenn from SFPD was there with some new developments in the case.”
“We’ll talk later,” said Uhura, nodding.
Dr. Park plucked a sheet of paper from the folder and held it up.
“Here’s your first decryption,” she announced.
McCoy looked at it. “The whole thing? This soon?”
Park smiled. “Doctor, would you call a family into surgery and say, ‘Folks, I’m about halfway done with that triple heart bypass, I just wanted to chat about my progress’?”
McCoy was amused. “No,” he said. Then he added, “I like your style, Professor.”
“Grade-grubbing doesn’t work in this office, mister,” said Dr. Park with a sly look. She turned to Uhura. “Well, the Romulan part was easy. Almost beneath us, I must say. The phonic scrambling is an old Romulan military code, one that United Earth Intelligence Agency cracked almost a hundred years ago, not long after the war kicked into full gear.”
“A hundred years ago?” repeated McCoy. “How the hell does a guy get a code like that?”
“Good question,” said Dr. Park. “The Romulans stopped using this basic encryption method long before the war ended, and it’s never been seen since. Once we tapped into the archives, Cheetah nailed the Romulan bits in about two minutes. The Xanno bits weren’t much tougher, because the encryption pattern was the same. The user simply applied the scramble to the Xanno language.”
She slapped the paper onto the desk. Uhura pulled a pencil from her case and looked at the breakdown.
“I don’t know Xanno well enough yet,” she said. “But there’s enough overlap that I can probably get most of this.” She penciled in a translation quickly. “Okay, this is the first phrase, the one spoken to Cadet Braxim,” she said.
McCoy stepped up beside her to read it.
Your species has already been absorbed.
“Absorbed?” asked McCoy. “What does that mean?”
Uhura looked down at the Romulan version again.
“The Romulan verb translating to absorbed may also be interpreted in a slightly more aggressive way, depending on context,” she said. “Something that in English might be more like incorporated . . . or assimilated.”
“Your species has already been assimilated,” said McCoy with a wry grin. “Sounds like Xannon anatomy is old news to the Doctor.”
“Maybe because of their shared roots in the Delta Quadrant,” said Uhura. “They’ve encountered each other before.”
“Exactly what I was thinking,” said McCoy. “The Doctor is only interested in organs he hasn’t eaten before.”
Uhura looked up at Dr. Park, who had been listening carefully and had a funny look on her face. “What is it, Professor?”
“Doesn’t it strike you as od
d that this person you recorded is speaking directly to folks using a Romulan military code scramble?” she asked. “I mean, this speech is coming right out of his mouth, right? Or is he wearing some sort of scrambler device, like a voice-filter mask that also encrypts speech? And if so, why? Doesn’t he want to actually communicate with the people he’s speaking to? Why speak in a code they cannot possibly understand? Or is he just an idiot?”
Uhura and McCoy looked at each other for a second. Then McCoy scratched his chin.
“Good questions,” he said.
“I’m sure the SFPD is wondering the same thing,” said Uhura. “Although, of course, they don’t have the benefit of our decrypted translations yet.”
Dr. Park brightened. “Ah yes,” she said. She pulled a second sheet of paper from the folder and put it on the desk. “This one had the same parameters, although the third language complicated things enough that Cheetah really chugged and took an extra forty-seven seconds to decode it.”
Uhura’s scans had found Romulan, Xanno, and English phonic fragments scrambled onto three overlapping tracks on the second recording, the one made from the Orion woman’s emergency call.
Dr. Park smiled at Uhura. “And I have a surprise for you on this one,” she said.
Uhura was intrigued. “This is the recording that ended with all that static?” she said.
“Yes and no,” said Dr. Park. “It ended with what might sound like static to the untrained ear. But my people are trained.”
McCoy and Uhura exchanged a look.
Dr. Park continued. “That static is actually a holo-image data transmission. Again, kind of old school, and kind of strange. Who speaks in binary file-transfer language?”
Once again, Uhura put pencil to paper and came up with a translation. “With the language overlaps, we have different shades of meaning on some of the words,” she said. “Again, the static is at the end. So that’s where I left a placeholder for the image data transfer.”
The translation she wrote down:
Species unknown to us. Acquire/assimilate samples that contrast with 5618. Reassemble/regroup at base [IMAGE DATA].
McCoy read it and shook his head.