Star Trek: DTI: Forgotten History

by Christopher L. Bennett

  Satak glared at T’Pring, but she stared back serenely. Finally he relented. “Very well. Jettison the drive. Helm,” he ordered into the intercom, “once the Vedala drive is ejected, take us to a safe distance.”

  T’Pring efficiently operated the jettison sequence, gratified that she at least had been able to send the confirmation message so that Spock would know of her safe return. They had already made their farewells before returning to their respective ships—and she knew that they had each given the other something they would carry with them forever. Although what she had gained from Spock could prove far more meaningful.

  Minutes later, the confluence drive erupted in a burst of subspace energy so intense that sensors showed it damaged the very structure of subspace. “The High Command will be displeased,” Satak told T’Pring. “That Vedala technology could have given us the power to defeat the Compact forever, to ensure the peace against all threats. We had it in our hands, and now we have lost it all. What will I tell them?”

  T’Pring pondered for a moment, remembering the thoughts of another mind. “Tell them that having is not so satisfying a thing as wanting.”

  “That is not logical,” Satak said.

  T’Pring heard Spock, from within, saying the same thing. “I disagree,” she replied. “Logically, one cannot truly assess the benefit of a possession one does not yet have. Thus a saying that is popular among the humans of the Federation: ‘Be careful what you wish for; you may get it.’”

  “Be wary, Subcommander,” Satak warned. “Some might interpret that as sedition.”

  “Indeed,” T’Pring replied. And they would be correct. Each of T’Pring’s statements about the drive malfunction had been truthful enough in isolation; it may hypothetically have been damaged in the transition, even if it had in fact been sabotaged afterward. And once she had begun the drive’s buildup to destruction, there had been nothing she could do to reverse it. Even if there had been, it would have remained true that she could not ethically have stopped it. She understood now that the Protectorate could not be allowed access to such an enormous advantage over their neighbors.

  At least, not as the Protectorate now was. Not so long as they were still the Vulcans of V’Las and Muroc, the ones who saw coercive force and suppression of unpopular ideas as a logical way to protect civilization. The ones who saw the joining of minds as a perversion. The ones who claimed to follow Surak’s will but forgot, more and more with each generation, what that truly meant.

  But it need not be that way forever. For Spock had given her something that would mean more to the Vulcan people than any mere stardrive. He had given her Surak’s true words—the Kir’Shara, whose text they had studied together in their time on the Hypatia. He had given her a copy for her personal database, so she could continue to study and contemplate its layers of meaning.

  And most importantly, he had told her where the Kir’Shara had been found in his reality. There was every chance that on her Vulcan, it was still there . . . just waiting for her to rediscover it and begin the redemption of a world.

  U.S.S. Hypatia

  Stardate 7586.7

  “Has there been any response from the Vedala yet?” Simok asked Director Grey, whose image flickered with subspace interference on the monitor in his VIP quarters. They were quite far from Earth, and it took considerable power to maintain a real-time communication.

  “Still nothing,” Grey told him. “At this point I’m not sure they’ll even want it back.”

  “Unlikely. The Vedala have always been intensely protective of their technology.”

  “Well, they’re not answering our calls, Simok. We can’t rely on them showing up to reclaim the planetoid themselves. With the Enterprise called back for debriefing, the Hypatia will have to stay on-site to guard against scavengers. I’ll see what I can do about assigning another ship there.”

  Simok nodded. Spock had accompanied the Enterprise to starbase; he hoped the debriefing process would be swift, since Spock had demonstrated an eagerness to return to his young pupil, Saavik. Simok could sympathize, having long ago discovered the fulfillment of imparting knowledge and insight to the young. Now he found similar fulfillment in helping the members of the young Department of Temporal Investigations determine how best to fulfill the unprecedented responsibilities they had taken on. He thought of Meijan Grey as his own protégée in a sense, and strove to offer his calm guidance and support when she struggled with the challenges of her post.

  “The Science Council also wants you to study the Vedala drives,” Grey went on. “Learn as much as you can about them before the Vedala claim them—if they ever do. Just the normal confluence drives, for their potential propulsion applications. But I insisted that the research be under DTI supervision, just in case.”

  “A logical precaution.”

  Grey paused. “What’s your assessment of the drives’ potential? Do you think there are time travel possibilities as well as interdimensional?”

  “The potential for one implies the potential for the other, Director. However, we would need a theoretical understanding of how they create the confluence effect before we could extrapolate how they might generate a temporal warp. Should these drives fall into the hands of the Klingons, the Romulans, or . . . certain irresponsible parties within the Federation . . . it might take generations to understand these mechanisms well enough to build new potentials into them.”

  Grey pondered his answer. “Understood.”

  “However,” it occurred to Simok, “it is possible that certain potentials of the drives such as we can understand and exploit could be combined with known technologies to achieve temporal effects.” He was silent for a beat. “For our purposes, it will be preferable if the Vedala reclaim the drives in the near future. There are those within the Federation who may not be content to research the propulsion possibilities alone.”

  Grey’s dainty lips narrowed. “Don’t worry about Delgado, Simok. I can manage things with him.”

  “I do not worry, Meijan,” Simok assured her. “And I have no doubt that you can.”

  Starfleet Headquarters

  Stardate 7589.3

  Antonio Delgado had spent a long day reviewing reports from dozens of Starfleet research vessels participating in an ongoing project to catalog ion storm categories throughout known space—a valuable project, to be sure, but a tedious one. He often strove to reassure himself that there was still plenty of satisfaction in his work as chief of Science Operations even without pursuing the mysteries of time. That the destiny he’d once imagined was guiding him had been wishful thinking, or at least that it had now moved him along a different path. But on days like this, it was difficult.

  He was just about to turn in for the evening when a communication came in on his terminal. The signature gave its point of origin as London, where it was much later at night. Who could be calling him at this hour?

  He opened the channel, and blinked in recognition at the dumpy, bald man who appeared there. “Mister Manners,” he said. “What can I do for you at this . . . very late . . . hour?”

  Arthur Manners of the DTI offered a conspiratorial smile. “The question, Admiral, is what I can do for you.”

  Delgado listened with fascination. Maybe destiny hadn’t abandoned him after all.

  XII

  U.S.S. Capitoline NCC-82617

  Stardate 60145.8

  February 2383

  “How much time did you spend on the planetoid?” Agent Lucsly asked T’Viss.

  “I personally spent most of my time in the Hypatia’s science labs, performing simulations and refining our theoretical models,” T’Viss clarified. Of course, Dulmur thought. Far be it from her to dirty her hands on actual machinery, even machinery as amazing as the Vedala’s creations. “However, the analysis teams remained on-site for five weeks and three days in total. I speak in the aggregate, for individual personnel were relieved and replaced. I believe at least one other Federation vessel arrived and departed during th
at interval, though I paid little attention to such things.

  “At the end of the cited interval, the Vedala finally arrived to reclaim their planetoid.”

  Dulmur leaned forward. “What were they like?” Few Federation citizens had ever interacted with the Vedala directly, even before their migrations had led them away from Federation space. They had always guarded their privacy intently.

  “There was no visual communication,” T’Viss said, deflating him. “But a second Vedala planetoid materialized at the first planetoid’s L1 libration point and transmitted instructions for our teams to evacuate immediately. Captain Danehl complied. They further required us to turn over all the data we had gathered about their technology. When I objected, the Hypatia lost all power. When power resumed, all our documentation of the confluence drives had been deleted from our computers.

  “The Vedala further required the Science Council and the DTI to turn over all duplicate records in their possession. It was unprecedented for the Vedala to be so . . . emphatic in their interactions with the Federation.”

  “But there were legends,” Dulmur said, “of what happened to civilizations who managed to make the Vedala angry.”

  “Indeed. Not wishing to take the chance that those legends were accurate, the Federation Council as a whole required the Science Council to turn over all data. Moreover, to accommodate the Vedala’s demands for secrecy, the entire affair was classified. The very fact that it had occurred was deleted from our records.” She raised a brow. “Many in the Federation Council were still in emotional distress following their near destruction by the V’Ger probe ten months earlier. They were afraid to risk the animosity of other entities whose power far exceeded our own.”

  “But you went further,” Lucsly said. “You repressed your own memory of the event.”

  “It is against my nature to allow a counterfactual statement to go uncorrected,” T’Viss said primly . . . though she went on in tones that, for her, were practically abashed. “I concluded that the only way I could be assured of keeping the secret was if I concealed it even from my own awareness.”

  “You keep plenty of secrets, T’Viss,” Dulmur said. “It’s part of the job.”

  “I have gained a great deal of experience in the intervening decades, Agent Dulmur. At the time, I was far younger and less corrupted by the practice of deceit.”

  Dulmur struggled to imagine a T’Viss who was even more blunt and uncompromising than the one he knew today. He shook his head, refocusing on what was important. “Anyway, none of this explains why that timeship is here today. If the Vedala reclaimed all their technology, how come that ship has a confluence drive on it?”

  Lucsly grimaced. “Kirk. He must’ve taken one aboard the Enterprise and run off with it before the Vedala got there. Probably took it right to Delgado.”

  “Wouldn’t the Vedala have known?” Dulmur asked.

  “They weren’t omniscient,” Lucsly said. “They didn’t seem to know about the return of their planetoid until the Federation got their attention. The downside of isolationism,” the agent went on, oblivious to the irony of those words coming from him of all people. “Kirk and Delgado might’ve told the Vedala that the Protectorate took the drive.”

  “Hold on, partner. T’Viss says another ship came and went after the Enterprise left. Besides, if it’s a Starfleet project, how come it’s got DTI markings and a civilian crew?”

  “Protective camouflage. They wanted to pin it on the DTI if anything went wrong.”

  Dulmur stared. “Aren’t you getting a little paranoid there, pal?”

  Lucsly’s gaze was intense. “This is Kirk we’re dealing with. I put nothing past him.”

  Timeship Two

  Confluence 2275/2383

  “Okay,” Garcia said as she closed the panel on the subspace transmitter junction. “That should do it.”

  Ranjea checked his tricorder to confirm. “Yes. The distress beacon is neutralized. We can only hope it was in time.”

  “Hey, I worked as fast as I could. Studying old technology in texts isn’t the same as actually operating it.”

  “No criticism intended, Teresa,” he said, stroking her shoulder, though she could barely feel it through the isolation suit. But his keener Deltan senses noted her tension. “We should get back to the Everett.”

  “No, Ranjea. Not yet. I’ve been thinking . . . we should find a library terminal and download the crew manifest. If we know who these people are, we can check against the Everett’s database, find out whether they lived past 2275.”

  “Teresa . . .”

  “Listen! We’re here, now. That makes us part of these past events whether we want to think we are or not. So maybe we have a role to play in history. Maybe we’re supposed to help these people. Maybe we have to in order to ensure our own history. A good old retrocausal Novikov loop. It’s possible, isn’t it?”

  His hand pressed her shoulder more firmly, comfortingly. “Yes, it’s possible. But we can’t be certain. Teresa, I understand how urgently you wish this could be an opportunity to save people in the past as you couldn’t before. But we have to play this by the book. You know that. It was what your own instincts told you back on the Verity, when you chose not to intervene in the past.”

  “I know, I know,” she said, putting her hands on his own broad shoulders. “But listen! The reason we don’t take chances like that is because we don’t have enough information about the past. All I’m saying is that we have an opportunity to get more information! At the very least, let’s read that crew manifest before we jump to any conclusions that could be catastrophic!”

  She couldn’t clearly read his expressions in the sensor image on her visor’s heads-up display, but she could feel him studying her, contemplating her words and the emotions that drove them. Ever since their close call with Deltan-style intimacy in the Axis of Time last year, there’d been a lingering empathic connection between them, and sometimes they could sense each other’s state of mind, especially at moments of strong emotion. After a moment, she felt the warmth of his smile. “You’re right, of course, Teresa. I’m sorry.”

  She punched his shoulder. “Hey, no mushy stuff, boss. There’s work to be done.”

  They made their way back through the service corridors to a data junction servicing the bridge, and Ranjea tapped into its feed with his tricorder. But before he could access the personnel records, an alarm drew his attention. “Oh, no,” he said.

  “What?”

  He struck his combadge. “Ranjea to Everett. We have a problem.”

  “Ranjea, this is Lucsly aboard the Capitoline. We’re eight point seven minutes away. Report.”

  “Gariff, hello. There’s a ship incoming from the 2275 side of the confluence zone. It’s sending hails in response to the timeship’s distress beacon. We were too late.”

  “Can you identify the ship?”

  Ranjea hesitated. Garcia stared; it was unlike him to be unsure of himself. “Yes, Gariff, I’m afraid so. It’s the U.S.S. Enterprise . . . NCC-1701.” He sighed. “It’s Kirk.”

  “Madre de Dios,” Garcia breathed. “We’re doomed.”

  XIII

  U.S.S. Enterprise

  Stardate 7675.1

  March 2275

  “What got into you, Hrrii’ush?” Hikaru Sulu asked Petty Officer Uuvu’it when he found him in Reiko Onami’s counseling office. “Starting a fight with Crewman Worene? What could’ve provoked you to do that?” As aggressive as the Betelgeusian was by instinct, such behavior was out of character for him. Even in his early days on the refitted Enterprise, before he’d learned to channel his intense need for challenge and competition in constructive ways, he’d acted out more through sophomoric pranks and reckless stunts than direct confrontation. True, the Enterprise had been on a rather tedious milk run for the past few weeks, a make-work mission from Starfleet Science Ops to update the star charts in a little-traveled sector toward the northern rim of the galactic disk, but Uuvu’it had handled tedi
ous assignments before without taking it to this level.

  Uuvu’it looked up at him defiantly, though the attitude faded when he saw that Sulu was in full-on second officer mode at the moment, not friend mode. “Well, if I’d started the fight with Ensign Nizhoni, I might’ve hurt her. Besides, she outranks me.”

  Onami gave a loud bark of laughter. “You? Hurt Mosi?” She laughed some more. “I’m sorry,” she finally managed to get out, recognizing Uuvu’it’s wounded expression. “I know your ego’s in a delicate place right now and all, but . . . damn, if you’d seen Nizhoni in action last month when the Gatherers tried to storm the Acamarian peace conference . . .” She dissolved into laughter again.

  This is how Onami handles her therapy sessions? Sulu thought. The dainty xenopsychologist had been brought aboard as part of Willard Decker’s initiative to diversify the crew, on the theory that such wildly disparate species would need some degree of expert assistance in order to mesh smoothly. After a year and a half of mostly smooth crew interactions, it seemed she was doing her job well. But Sulu was sometimes at a loss to see how.

  Uuvu’it bristled. “There’s nothing delicate about my ego! I have no insecurities about my malehood, my work performance, or anything else!”

  “Then why are you throwing temper tantrums just because Spock came back and kicked you off the bridge?” Onami challenged.

  “He did not . . .” Uuvu’it tempered his tone, and the voder translation came out commensurately softer. “He did not ‘kick me off.’ I still man the science station on gamma shift.”

  “Really?” Onami asked, not tempering her own confrontational tone at all. “On a ’Geusian argosy, getting bumped from alpha to gamma would be pretty shameful, wouldn’t it? You’d feel you had something to prove. That you’d have to fight the guy who displaced you for dominance. Or, failing that, fight anyone tough you could find to stand in for him.”

  “We’re not on an argosy!” Uuvu’it fired back.

  Onami sat back and smiled. “No, we’re not. Are we?”