Star Trek: DTI: Forgotten History

by Christopher L. Bennett

  He took in the others’ gaze one by one. “And they’re sitting between us and that Vedala planetoid. If we can’t get back there and find a way to return home, we could be stuck here for a very long time . . . without a friendly port to be found.”

  IX

  U.S.S. Hypatia NCC-S415

  Stardate 7584.7

  “Fascinating.”

  The ship Spock beheld on the Hypatia’s main viewer spoke of paths not taken by the Vulcans of his reality. Its spindle-and-hoop arrangement resembled a Suurok-class vessel from the era of the Vulcan High Command—an institution that had apparently survived into the present of this vessel’s timeline of origin. Yet it was more advanced than the ships of that era in some respects—particularly weaponry and shielding—while in other respects was less sophisticated than present-day Federation ships of this timeline.

  “Indeed,” said Deputy Director Simok of the Department of Temporal Investigations, who stood next to Spock on the Hypatia’s old-style bridge. The Capella-class survey vessel, attached to the DTI, had already been on its way to join the Enterprise in its survey of the Vedala planetoid before both had vanished into the renewed subspace confluence and this vessel, identified in its transmissions as the Muroc, had appeared in its place. Director Grey had asked Simok to oversee the mission personally, given its potential importance. “I have spent decades refining our theoretical understanding of alternate quantum histories. Yet it is compelling to perceive firsthand proof of their reality. Is that illogical?” he asked, raising a brow with what Spock had come to recognize as self-effacing humor, for Simok was secure enough in his Vulcan disciplines to be untroubled by the occasional, justified exception.

  “Not at all, sir,” Spock replied with commensurate good nature. “A model may be soundly derived through logic and mathematics, but is still an unproven abstraction unless it is grounded in evidence. Logic is a means of evaluating fact, not supplanting it.”

  “Well spoken,” Simok replied. “But you have had such firsthand experience before. What fascinates you about this vessel?”

  “For one thing, how easily one may discern its timeline’s era of divergence from its design. It is almost purely Vulcan, with no technological borrowings from other species, particularly humans. As a result, it is . . . limited compared to Federation designs. An illustration of the truth of Kol-Ut-Shan,” he said, citing the Vulcan philosophy which humans translated as “infinite diversity in infinite combinations.”

  “The principle that we are stronger together than apart,” Simok said, then nodded toward the Muroc on the screen. “Let us hope these Vulcans appreciate it as we do.”

  “Agreed,” Spock said with an intensity he saw no need to hide from Simok. His curiosity about alternative engineering history aside, he found himself experiencing an unwonted impatience to resolve this matter, and not merely for the sake of his comrades on the Enterprise. He disliked being away from Saavik at this time. In the three months since he had rescued the preadolescent Vulcan-Romulan girl from the abandoned Romulan colony known as Hellguard, she had made considerable progress at overcoming the feral behavior she had acquired there, but she still needed close supervision. The colonists in whose care he had left Saavik were neighbors who had established a cordial relationship with Spock and his protégée, but they had children of their own and might be overburdened by the responsibility for tending to Saavik as well, particularly given their limited grasp of her special needs. He made sure to correspond with her daily over subspace, but it was far from the ideal situation. He would have preferred leaving her in the care of his own parents on Vulcan; indeed, Sarek and Amanda had already agreed to take responsibility for the child’s upbringing once Spock decided she was ready to be integrated into Vulcan society. But the exigencies of the current crisis had left him no time for that. By favorable happenstance, the colony had been fairly close to the course of the Hypatia, so the vessel had been able to pick him up with a minimal delay in its rendezvous time with the Muroc. But Vulcan was nearly two weeks away in the wrong direction.

  Moreover, Spock recognized that, in human terms, he simply missed Saavik. At first, his decision to take responsibility for the orphaned child had been logical, though he would not deny an element of sympathy. The girl had refused the genetic tests which would identify her nearest Vulcan relatives, so she would have been remanded to institutional care had he left it at that. Since he had been the one to discover her and convince her to return to civilization, Spock had concluded that would be a breach of his responsibility. Besides, he believed he might be uniquely qualified to assist Saavik. In a way, they were kindred spirits: children of two cultures, outsiders who struggled with emotional control. But Spock had an advantage he would have lacked in the past. Since his mind-meld with the vast cybernetic entity known as V’Ger, he had realized that a life of pure logic was barren, that emotion was necessary to create meaning and fulfillment. He had spent the subsequent months pursuing a new synthesis of logic and emotion—still mastering and regulating his feelings, for Vulcan passions were dangerous if unleashed, but accepting them as a component of his logical decision-making process rather than attempting to ignore or fight them. Given that Saavik had spent the first eleven years of her life either raised by Romulans or left to fend for herself in the wilds of Hellguard, she had none of the foundational training in emotional control that Vulcan children were given. So Spock had resolved that a conventional Vulcan education would be ill-suited to her needs. Instead, he had taken it upon himself to apply the lessons he had learned since V’Ger, attempting to train Saavik to come to terms with her emotional responses through acceptance and controlled release rather than suppression.

  If anything, he had been learning as much from the experience as Saavik had. Keeping his emotions in a healthy balance had been difficult in those first months after V’Ger, but the need to set a good example for Saavik, and to remain patient with her frequent outbursts and misbehaviors, had brought him to a place of greater serenity. He did not consider Saavik a daughter, any more than he would consider her a sister if Sarek and Amanda were to adopt her later on. Those biological ties carried depths of meaning to a Vulcan that the human terms could not encompass, and adoptive or surrogate relationships were simply not seen the same way. But perhaps, as Jim Kirk was t’hy’la, the friend who was as close as a brother, Saavik might be t’kam’la, the student who was as cherished as a daughter. And so mentoring her had changed him in a way not unlike becoming a father. It was the only experience he had ever undertaken which was as rewarding as his service aboard the Enterprise.

  And yet the Enterprise was still his home, so when Admiral Delgado had contacted him about the ship’s disappearance, he had immediately requested to join the Hypatia. He believed Saavik had understood, for he had spoken to her often of his shipmates and the benefits he gained from Starfleet service. But the look in her eyes when he left had been one of fear, of doubt that he would return to her. Given her history, it was unsurprising that she feared abandonment. He was determined to resolve this matter quickly so that he could return to her and address whatever damage he had done.

  He put such thoughts aside when the Hypatia’s Efrosian communications officer spoke up. “Captain, the Muroc is hailing.”

  “Onscreen.” Captain Nijen Danehl was a Makusian female, tall and lanky with deep bronze skin and backswept, winglike ears. She rose to her full, 1.9-meter height as the commander of the Muroc appeared on the viewscreen. “Greetings once again, Commander Satak,” she said with the open warmth of her people. Spock raised a brow. In this reality, Satak had been a Starfleet officer, captain of the Intrepid when it had been destroyed by a spacegoing unicellular organism in the Gamma 7A system. It was perhaps not surprising that this alternate Satak had chosen a similar career path, given the same inherent aptitudes and inclinations. But it was gratifying to know that at least one incarnation of Satak still lived.

  This Satak, however, did not seem gratified. “Captain. You are behind
schedule.”

  “Apologies,” Danehl said, “but as we informed you, we needed to divert to pick up a specialist.” She gestured to Spock, who came forward. “This is Commander Spock, science officer of the Enterprise. He has prior experience with the phenomenon that displaced you into this reality.”

  Satak looked him over. “Commander Spock. If you serve aboard the missing vessel, why are you here now?”

  “I was on leave at the time of its disappearance, Commander. But it is still my ship, my crew. As you can imagine, I am highly motivated to return them to where they belong.”

  Satak considered him a moment more, then nodded. “I see that the Vulcans of your continuum still value loyalty as we do.”

  “It is a value shared by most of the races of the Federation.”

  “This is not a sociological study, Commander Spock. You are here to coordinate with my science staff in order to bring about our return to our continuum. I suggest you proceed.”

  “Very well,” Spock said. “I recommend you transport your science officer aboard the Hypatia, so we may evaluate the data contained in its computers.”

  “Agreed. Then we will proceed together back to the site of the anomaly.”

  “Excellent,” Danehl said. “Let us know when your delegation is ready to beam over.”

  Satak cut the channel, and Danehl turned to her guest. “Mister Spock?”

  Spock nodded. “Professor Simok, if you would accompany me? You as well, please, Ms. Watley.” Dierdre Watley, now the Hypatia’s science officer, nodded and rose to join them. It had been years since Watley had been a member of Spock’s science department aboard the Enterprise, but he had continued to follow her research into temporal theory and found her grasp of the subject incisive.

  As soon as they reached the transporter room on Deck 5, the Caitian transporter operator told them, “The party from the Muroc is ready to beam aboard, sirs.”

  Though Spock was the ranking Starfleet officer here, he deferred to Simok’s leadership of the mission. The older Vulcan nodded. “Bring them aboard, please.”

  Three columns of particulate matter shimmered into being on the transporter pad and solidified into three Vulcans, two females and a male. Spock took in all three faces, but then found his attention jerked back to the lead female, who stepped down from the pad with an imperious air. The shorter hair and utilitarian jumpsuit had misled him for an instant, but he knew that haughty poise as well as he knew her almond-shaped eyes, her fine bone structure, her vivid scent. A scent whose associations in his memory almost overwhelmed his emotional restraint.

  Parted from me and never parted . . . never and always touching and touched.

  . . . As it will be for all tomorrows, I make my choice.

  I came to know that I did not want to be the consort of a legend.

  The voice echoed in his mind, the same as the voice that now addressed Simok. “I am Subcommander T’Pring, chief scientist of the Muroc.”

  Spock told himself that his reaction to Subcommander T’Pring was illogical. This was not the person he had been betrothed to at the age of seven. This was not the woman he had returned to Vulcan to marry when the pon farr came upon him. This was not the woman who had desired the company of another male instead, and had thus ruthlessly manipulated him into the kal-if-fee, the challenge to the death, against his own captain and friend. The emotions that her face, her voice, her scent evoked in him—emotions he was now able to face directly and identify as a mix of desire, betrayal, resentment, and perhaps a touch of fear—were meant for another person, her quantum counterpart in this reality. However identical they may have been, this T’Pring had lived a different life, made different choices. In her universe, no human births had taken place in over three centuries, so Amanda Grayson had never been born, and thus neither had Spock. He had no history with this woman, no prior basis for mistrust.

  But it proved difficult to let go of his prejudices when the subcommander was so clearly hiding things from him, Simok, and the rest of the team. Her explanations about the Muroc’s actions and circumstances prior to its arrival in this timestream were elliptical and evasive. And they failed to address a key question. With time being of the essence, Spock confronted her on that point. “Perhaps you would care to explain,” he said, showing her a sensor readout of the Muroc, “what it is you have in your cargo hold that is able to create a void in the neutrino background.”

  Subcommander T’Pring stared at him tensely for a moment, as did her two aides. Then, unexpectedly, she relaxed. “I knew it was a mistake to keep this from you. It was Satak’s order, for security reasons. I failed to convince him that openness would better suit our goals.”

  She inserted a data card into the briefing room’s reader slot and entered a decryption code. The image of a large, intricate device appeared on the screen: a series of nested spherical lattices with a glowing, multilobed core. “We retrieved this mechanism from beneath the surface of the Vedala planetoid your Enterprise was sent to investigate, while it still resided in our continuum. We discovered only a few years ago that the planetoid had apparently taken the place of a Minsharaclass planet in an uninhabited system.”

  “You mean Earth,” Dierdre Watley said.

  “Apparently that was one of the local names used by its civilization during our early surveys generations ago. But that civilization suffered a global biological cataclysm before it could achieve starflight, and thus we never made contact. Remote analysis suggested that Vulcans would be immune to the plague but could transmit it to other species. Thus, we interdicted the system and paid little subsequent attention to it. We only discovered the planetary substitution due to the minuscule gravitational anomalies it created in the orbits of nearby populated systems. Since normal-space gravitational effects propagate only at the speed of light, we did not discover the substitution until years after it had occurred.”

  Simok frowned. “You completely ignored the system after it was interdicted? You saw no benefit in studying it remotely to observe whether the survivors were able to rebuild their society or even continue to exist?”

  T’Pring tilted her head in a way that was both haughty and embarrassed at the same time. “The High Command places a low priority on pure research. There was no practical gain to studying the system, so the Protectorate focused its attention elsewhere. However, once it was discovered that an apparently abandoned Vedala planetoid had replaced that world, study of the phenomenon became a priority. The Muroc spent several weeks surveying the planetoid and analyzing the strange subspace effect it was generating—what you call a confluence.” She gestured at the screen. “We determined that these devices in its crust were responsible for the effect.”

  “So you removed one.”

  “Yes. And in so doing, we most likely precipitated what happened next. The other devices began going into shutdown. The confluence field began to dissipate. The Muroc had barely retreated before the planetoid disappeared and the original planet—Earth, as you call it,” she said to Watley, “materialized in its place.”

  “Back in its original orbit?” Spock asked.

  “Not quite, as a consequence of the displacement by a body of differing mass and the time it spent circling another star. Our projections show its new orbit will render the planet uninhabitable in the long term.”

  Watley appeared saddened by the fate of the planet. “How fortunate,” Spock reminded her, “that all its surviving inhabitants were evacuated before its return.”

  “Maybe,” Watley replied, “but what about all the animals? And still . . . it’s home. At least, it was once.”

  Spock did not attempt to question her sentiment. He accepted that emotion could have value even if he could not fully agree with it. And he admitted that he could not predict how he might react to news of a similar cataclysm befalling Vulcan, even in another timeline.

  T’Pring continued, disregarding the exchange. “The Muroc continued to survey the returned Earth for several days, until we
could be confident the planetoid would not return. We then proceeded toward Vulcan, but soon after we passed Axanar, the device in the hold began to activate. And we found ourselves here.”

  “Intriguing,” said Simok. “The devices from the Vedala planetoid—presumably their planetary drives—must share some form of quantum entanglement that transcends even the dimensional phase separation between timelines. That would explain why the planetoid’s second displacement exchanged it with the Muroc instead of with Earth once again. The planetary drive aboard the Muroc attracted the confluence like a lightning rod, if I may be forgiven the crude metaphor.”

  “So why did it swap with Earth in the first place?” Watley asked.

  “Perhaps mere chance. Under normal circumstances, with the drives all operating together, the confluence might exchange with any given location in another spacetime domain. But with one drive separated from the others, they attracted and exchanged with one another instead.”

  “In any case,” Spock said, “we can gain little further understanding without studying the device directly. I recommend we adjourn to the Muroc’s cargo hold.”

  He held T’Pring’s gaze, and to his surprise, she evinced no reluctance. “I agree. And I should be able to convince Commander Satak of the need, now that our possession of the drive is no longer secret.”

  It seemed her gaze lingered on Spock’s for longer than was necessary. Was it possible that she . . . No. Spock dismissed the thought as illogical and irrelevant.

  V.H.C. Muroc

  “What does Hypatia mean?” T’Pring asked Spock once they arrived aboard her ship.

  “Hypatia was a philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician on ancient Earth—a woman of great accomplishment in fields that women in her culture were almost completely excluded from. She was murdered as a consequence of a religious and cultural upheaval in which her civilization and its literature, art, and scholarship were largely destroyed. She is seen by many humans as a martyr to the cause of science and reason.”