Collective Hindsight Book 2

by Aaron Rosenberg

  “We could destroy them, though.” Fabian waved aside Tev’s look of scorn. “I know, I know—they’d call their buddies the minute they saw us move. Can we jam their signal?”

  Soloman spoke up from his console. “Androssi systems are highly resistant to our interference, and with each new encounter they’ve upgraded to prevent previous methods from working.”

  “Right, hence Corsi’s Androssi Protocols One, Two, and now Three,” Sonya agreed. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea.” She tapped her combadge. “Corsi, can you beam up to the bridge, please?”

  An instant later, the air next to Sonya shimmered, and Corsi appeared. Fabian was amused but not surprised to see that she was carrying a phaser rifle in addition to her usual type-1 phaser—even though the Androssi had never had a chance at getting onto this ship, their security chief believed in being prepared. He filed away a mental reminder to tease her about that later, when they were alone.

  “Yes, Commander?” As usual, Corsi looked calm, collected, and ready to commit violence.

  “We have a situation, Domenica, and I was hoping for your input.” Sonya gestured at the forward screen—it was no longer split in half, and now showed a graph of the area around the star, including the red dot that was the Androssi ship. “That is the Androssi ship that’s guarding us. We can’t go after it because it’ll just call its friends back. We can’t run or it’ll chase us—and call its friends back. And we can’t just sit here, because the engines will overload eventually.”

  “In three-point-six-five days,” Tev added. Sonya ignored him, a trick Fabian was still hoping to learn someday. Then again, it was easier for Sonya—she was Tev’s commanding officer.

  “So we need to take him out before he can send a message,” Corsi said, and the others all nodded.

  “Any ideas?”

  Corsi smiled and sighted down her warp rifle, aiming it at the blip on the screen. “Of course, Commander. Taking out the bad guy is one of the things I do best.”

  * * *

  Sub-Overseer Rando sat at the helm of his ship, watching the viewscreen. He was pleased that Caldon had given him this assignment instead of Mudat. Of course, circling a star in the hopes that some unknown ship had somehow survived diving into it was a waste of time. But that was Overseer Caldon’s call, not his. If nothing had occurred by the end of a week, Rando would return and report, as ordered. If something did happen, he would be waiting and ready. Either way, he had done his job properly, and that would be reflected in his next promotion.

  A brief flicker on the screen drew his attention. The surface of the sun was bubbling slightly, and a flicker shot out from it. On the screen it looked like a mere flame, but the computer showed the truth—that was a solar flare, easily a mile long and half that in width. It was impressive, certainly, but Rando had parked his ship five miles beyond the sun’s corona, safely out of flare range.

  “Any change?” he asked his crew, just to be thorough. They shook their heads.

  “Still no life signs, Sub-Overseer,” one of them reported. “And no activity not consistent with that of a star of this type.”

  “Very good.” Rando sat back in his seat again and smiled. This would be an easy assignment. And when it was over, and he was back home, he—

  Another bubbling occurred, and then grew. Even as Rando watched, still half-distracted, the bubbling erupted, and a massive tongue of flame shot forth. This was easily three times the size of the previous flare, and as he watched it, covered the screen—

  —and Rando’s last thought, as the solar flare engulfed his ship, was that perhaps Mudat had gotten the better assignment, after all.

  * * *

  “Nice shot, Corsi!”

  Corsi nodded back and stepped away from the console. “Thank you, Commander.”

  Just then Gomez’s combadge beeped, and they all heard Gold’s voice. “Gomez, report. What was the rumble we just felt?”

  Sonya smiled and tapped her badge to respond. “Good news, Captain. We’ve eliminated the Androssi ship. Coast is clear.”

  “Good. How did you do it?”

  Sonya glanced over at Corsi, who was hefting her warp rifle again. “I asked Corsi for aid, sir. And she figured it out.”

  Gold’s laugh came through clearly. “Well, leave it to her to think of a way to shoot somebody while holed up in a sun. So, are you going to tell me the rest, or are you going to make me lie awake trying to figure it out?”

  Sonya gestured at Corsi, who shrugged and hit her own badge. “It was simple, Captain. This ship is built to absorb solar energy. We’re inside a sun. So we’re effectively invisible—their sensors would simply show solar activity while we were here. That meant we could move right up near the sun’s surface and they still couldn’t see us.”

  “Okay, but that’s still a few miles from them. Even the guns Stevens rigged for this monster can’t reach that far.”

  “No sir.” Corsi smiled. “But its main engine can. We turned around and used the engine as a giant rifle. The blast looked just like a solar flare—which it basically is—and had more than enough range to destroy their ship. And it all happened too fast for them to react, much less send any messages.”

  “Nice work, Corsi. Now, Gomez, if we’re all done here, let’s take care of this ship once and for all. And I’d like to get the da Vinci back where we can see the stars, if you don’t mind.”

  * * *

  Shabalala glanced down at the command chair from the tactical station on the da Vinci bridge. “The Dancing Star has cleared the corona, Captain.”

  “Opening cargo bay doors,” Haznedl added.

  “Good.” Gold leaned forward. “Wong, take us out of this beast, please.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The da Vinci’s engines fired up, and the ship moved out of the hold and back into space. Gold couldn’t help but sigh in relief. He wasn’t normally claustrophobic, but having his entire ship inside another ship, and that ship inside a sun, had been a bit much. Being back out among the stars, where he could see their lights twinkling against the darkness, made him feel a lot better.

  He tapped the comm unit on his chair. “Gomez, do you read me?”

  Sonya replied quickly. “Yes, Captain?”

  “The da Vinci is clear. How are you and your team doing down there?”

  “Almost done, sir. Another ten minutes or so.”

  “Fine—let us know when you’re ready.”

  Gold sat back and waited, and enjoyed the view. In what seemed like less than ten minutes—and, knowing this team, probably was—Gomez requested that she and her team be beamed up. Chief Poynter responded immediately, and reported to Gold a moment later that the full S.C.E. team was now back on board.

  “Good. Mr. Wong, get us out of here, please. Set a course for Starbase 222.”

  “Yes, sir.” And with that the da Vinci was moving again.

  Chapter

  7

  “So it’s all taken care of?” Gold asked as they gathered around the conference table again. Pattie thought he looked relieved, and it occurred to her that, for a starship captain, being confined and unable to see the stars was particularly torturous.

  “Done deal,” Fabian said, and the others nodded. “This time it won’t be coming back.”

  Sonya explained further. “We disconnected the Dancing Star’s entire conductor array. All of the capacitors, the conduits, the crystals—everything. We couldn’t take the hull off, since we were still floating along the corona’s outer edge, but we did everything short of that.”

  “Which means it cannot power up again,” Pattie added. “Then we vented all the energy in its cells, so the ship is now completely without power.”

  “I purged the computer systems,” Soloman said. “Nothing is left to start up again. I even removed the hardwired commands, like its directive to return home.”

  “And then we just beamed out and left it there.” Gold glanced over at Fabian, and it occurred to Pattie that he might think
Fabian was kidding. But one look at his face revealed what she already knew, that he was serious. This time.

  “Wait a second, you left it there? Sitting on the outer edge of the sun, where anyone could beam on to it?” But the captain calmed down a moment later—perhaps because several of them were smiling.

  “The sun’s gravity has pulled the ship into its core,” Tev said, even though Gold was already shaking his head. Of course, Pattie thought. He knows how gravity wells work—he just wasn’t thinking about that at the moment.

  “Has it been destroyed, then?”

  Everyone glanced around, but no one answered. Finally, since no one had volunteered, Pattie spoke up. “We don’t know, Captain. The Dancing Star was built to withstand the heat and energy of a sun. And even though we disconnected everything, its hull is intact. It could still be in there.”

  “It might always be in there,” Fabian said. “Or at least as long as that sun survives.”

  “But it’s definitely not going anywhere this time,” Sonya added. “And nobody can get to it, unless they can already dive into a sun and survive—in which case they won’t gain much from finding it.”

  “Well, at least it’s not a threat anymore.” Gold leaned back and looked around. “Did you bring back any of the pieces for study?”

  Pattie couldn’t help wriggling her antennae in excitement. “Of course. We have one of the crystals from the engine, and one of the capacitors, and one of the energy panes it used. Plus a sample of the hull, and the recording Soloman made of the computer systems.”

  Gold laughed. “Well, that ought to keep you all pretty busy, then.” He stood to go. “Good work, team. I’ll let Captain Scott know that the universe is safe from at least one runaway star.”

  * * *

  “Penny for your thoughts, Commander?” Most of the others had filed out, but Sonya looked up to discover Fabian, Pattie, and Soloman standing before her.

  “Sorry, Fabe, just lost in thought.” She smiled a little. “I was just thinking about—well, about how funny life is.”

  “You don’t seem to be laughing.” Pattie’s observation did make Sonya laugh, at least a little.

  “No, not funny that way. More funny-odd. I mean, here is this ship, this amazing ship, and what do we do with it? We send it into a sun where no one can touch it.” She sighed. “Plus it’s a ship we’ve already seen once before, and now we’re dealing with it again.”

  Fabian and Pattie exchanged glances. “Actually, Commander, we were thinking about that too, Pattie and I.” Fabian sat down next to her. “The three of us”—he included Pattie and Soloman with a wave of his hand”—were on the original team. We thought we’d figured this ship out and shut it down, and now here it comes all over again. We couldn’t help feeling like it was a ghost from our past.”

  “An old mistake, come back to haunt us,” Pattie said. “And we wondered if, since we got it wrong the first time, we had any hope of figuring it out the second time.”

  “Especially since…we aren’t who we were then.” Soloman looked sad, and Sonya knew that this mission had hurt him at least as much as it had her. She’d been reminded of Kieran, but he had been reminded of 111, and they had actually been on this mission together, whereas she had not even been part of the team yet.

  “But we couldn’t have fixed this one without any of you.” She looked at each of them in turn. “All of you contributed to this, and came up with things Tev and I didn’t. We needed the fresh perspective, yes, but we also needed your ability to look back at it and see it again with more experienced eyes.”

  “I…was embarrassed,” Soloman admitted quietly. “Embarrassed that 111 and I had missed that emergency protocol before. And I felt that I was tainting her memory by revealing that she and I had made a mistake.” He lifted his head and met her gaze, and Sonya saw a strength there that she’d seen slowly growing since Venus. “But her memory is still there. We made a mistake, but now we’ve corrected it. And I don’t think we, she and I together, would have caught the mistake this time, either. I think I caught it because I am no longer 110. I am Soloman. I have changed—grown—and that’s made a difference.”

  “Pattie and I may not have changed so profoundly,” Fabian said with a smile, “but we feel the same way. We were less experienced, less crafty. It’s not that we were fools, just that we may not have had the tools we needed back then. Now we do. We’re all better than we were before.”

  “And part of that,” Pattie added, antennae waving gently, “is because we’re part of this team. The old group was strong, but this one—this one is stronger.”

  “I know,” Sonya said softly. “And it bothers me a little. As much as I hate to admit it, Kieran couldn’t have done the things Tev did. Not that Kieran wasn’t wonderful, and a great engineer, but his mind worked differently. We needed Tev for this.”

  “And we needed you,” Pattie said. “You looked at the problem from a different perspective than Salek did, and saw what he missed.”

  Sonya stood, and Fabian did as well, the four of them clustering together. Like a group—like a family. “I think,” she said slowly, discovering it as she spoke, “that I could see it because Salek had laid the groundwork for me. Because all of you had. He set things up, and that let me come in now and figure it out from there.”

  Fabian laughed, “You know, hindsight usually only works if it’s your own.”

  Sonya met his laugh with one of her own. “Well, maybe, but on this team we share so much anyway, what’s one more thing?” Then she shook her head and smiled. “I do feel good about it, though. I feel like this was a chapter in this crew’s history, and we helped close it properly. And maybe now Salek”—she felt her eyes tearing up slightly, and this time chose not to fight it—“and Kieran and 111 and McAllan and Feliciano and Drew and Barnak and all the others who have gone before can finally rest properly, knowing that we’ve put it all to rights.”

  “Well,” Pattie replied with a tinkle, “I don’t know about all of it. What have we left to work on, then?”

  “Not to worry, Pattie,” Fabian told her as the four of them headed toward engineering. “I’m sure we’ll find something.”

  END

  About the Author

  AARON ROSENBERG was born in New Jersey, grew up in New Orleans, graduated high school and college in Kansas, and now lives in New York. He has published short stories, poems, essays, articles, reviews, and nonfiction books, but for the last ten years the majority of his writing has been in role-playing. Aaron has written for more than ten game systems (including Lord of the Rings, Vampire, DC Universe, EverQuest, and Star Trek) and is the president of his own game company, Clockworks (www.clockworksgames.com). He has two degrees in English, and misses teaching college English, which he did for several years. His other fiction includes the previous S.C.E. eBook The Riddled Post and the novelette “Inescapable Justice” in Imaginings: An Anthology of Long Short Fiction. He is currently hard at work on more S.C.E. fiction.

  Coming Next Month:

  Star Trek™: S.C.E. #35

  The Demon

  Book 1

  by Loren L. Coleman

  & Randall N. Bills

  What begins as a simple investigation of a peculiar subspace signal leads to an errand of mercy, as the da Vinci responds to a distress signal—from the edge of a black hole! Hundreds of years ago, the Resaurians placed a station near the event horizon, forever teetering on the edge of the abyss, and now the S.C.E. must find a way to rescue them.

  But the black hole, known as “the Demon,” contains centuries-old secrets that the Resaurians will kill to protect—and both the U.S.S. da Vinci and the station may be sacrificed to the Demon in order to preserve those secrets!

  COMING IN DECEMBER FROM POCKET BOOKS!

 

 

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