by Dave Stern
“Relay stations abutting the Procyron sector recorded a Conani freighter’s distress signal approximately one hour ago,” Emmen said. “General Jaedez ordered the Armada to launch immediately. We encountered the wreckage of that freighter approximately fifteen minutes later, and the Antianna vessel shortly thereafter. This way, please.”
He led her to the nearest of the horseshoe consoles. The two of them stood behind it, side by side, and watched the Mediators work. Hoshi was barely able to follow what they were doing; she heard snippets of the Antianna signal, the one she’d spent so many long and fruitless hours trying to puzzle out, heard it filtered, truncated, with portions amplified, portions reduced in volume, saw physical representations of its waveforms on the console screens before her, saw each of its fifty-seven individual components mapped out on a grid according to phoneme distribution, all of which were happening simultaneously, all of which (apparently) the Mediators before her were able to keep track of in their heads as they walked between different consoles, different stations at those consoles.
Most of her attention, however, was still focused on the scene playing out before her. The Antianna ship, under attack by Thelasian forces.
The little vessel was still, incredibly, managing to hold its own.
Part of that was because the Armada was too overwhelmingly big—too many ships, in too tight a space. They had to take care with each weapons burst not to hit their own. But that was what computers were for, and they were getting enough shots off that the little ship should have been space dust long ago. Except it wasn’t. Largely because the ship seemed to have a kind of sixth sense—to move just as weapons fire arrived.
Hoshi noticed that it was not returning that fire. More proof, to her way of thinking, that the Antianna’s intentions were peaceful—or at least, as Captain Archer had surmised, relatively benevolent. That they were simply marking off their space. This far, and no farther.
“It’s transmitting the signal?” she asked.
“It began doing so almost immediately upon the Armada’s arrival. Excuse me a moment.”
Another mediator approached, and handed Emmen a device of some kind. A headset. He donned it, and almost immediately, began nodding. Listening to someone. Hoshi had no way of knowing for sure, but it seemed to her his skin grew slightly paler as he listened.
He was visibly shaken as he handed the headset back. He spoke a few words to the Mediator who’d given him the device, and then turned back to her.
“Elder Green will not be able to meet with you at this time. My apologies.”
“I understand. I’m just—whatever I can do to help.”
“Help?” He looked at her strangely. “Help with what?”
She frowned. “With translating the alien signal.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “Of course. Come with me.”
He led her to a horseshoe console at one end of the room, unoccupied save for a single Mediator engaged in maintenance of some kind.
“The stations here all utilize the standard Mediation interface. Please familiarize yourself with it,” Emmen said. “I will return.”
And then he was gone.
“Human.” The Mediator working at the console drew her attention to the terminal farthest away from him. “Use that station. Only that station. Do you understand?”
He spoke very slowly, as if he were talking to a child.
“I understand,” Hoshi said, glaring back at him. “I’m not an idiot.”
He looked at her like she was exactly that.
She walked over to the station he’d pointed out. It consisted of an input padd, and a headset, similar to the one Emmen had worn. She picked it up. There were two thin metal arms attached to the earpieces. They slid up and down the main body of the headset at her touch. One was for voice input, obviously, she had seen Emmen use it as such. The other…
Visual?
She slid the arms into position, slipped the headset on, and sat. The input padd in front of her looked identical to the one in the courier ship—a series of reddish circles, less worn here than on that vessel, embossed on a black metallic surface.
What next?
She ran a hesitant finger over one of the circles. The padd came to life under her hand. A hissing noise, followed by static, filled both ears. A thin beam of blue light shot forward from the upper of the two arms attached to the headset and hovered in the air before her.
She adjusted the headset once more, and began experimenting with the input pad. She found the control for the audio—volume and frequency—and scrolled through a multitude of different signals. She listened for a moment to one, a broadcast in what she recognized as Conani, in the few brief seconds it took for her UT to catch up and start translating. Someone was yelling—a private conversation. Rather than eavesdrop—she, at least, knew what manners were—she moved past that frequency, and then moved off the audio control entirely and on to the next one on the input pad.
She brushed her index finger against it lightly.
It was as if someone had put a motor on the back of her chair, and pressed Go.
She shot forward into the blue light in front of her, and everything around her went blue. The color was everywhere she looked, all she could see, as if she’d jumped into an entirely different world. A blue world. A virtual world.
She slid her finger in the opposite direction, and she was back in the analysis chamber, back in her chair.
Wow.
She scrolled forward again. Into the blue, and then back out.
She played around like that for a moment, before moving on to the rest of the controls on the pad. She couldn’t quite figure out what they were for, at first, touched one after another with no results. Until she tried two in tandem.
She shot forward into the blue again, only this time as she moved—more correctly, as the light surrounded her—the color around her crackled with static, went to black for a second, and then the analysis chamber took shape around her once more. Again, she was staring out at row after row of the horseshoe-shaped consoles, at brown robe after brown robe, stretching on before her, seemingly into infinity.
I broke it, she thought. I broke the interface.
But just as she pictured herself pulling the headset off and having to confess her sin to a whole room full of Mediators, she saw there was no transparent wall looking out into space ahead of her.
She was still in the virtual world—an uncannily realistic simulation of the analysis chamber.
She scrolled the input pad again. The controls moved her instantaneously through the chamber, from one console to another. As she approached one of those consoles, one of the Mediators stationed at it turned toward her expectantly. Waiting.
“May I assist?” it said.
Hoshi adjusted the lower arm of the headest, and spoke.
“What is this place?”
The Mediator frowned at her.
“Language: English. Species: human, Sol system, Planet Three, Earth, Level-Four Technological Development, Dominant Culture: Anglo-Saxon. One moment.”
The analysis chamber in front of her crackled with static again, and then faded slowly to black.
Hoshi waited.
Light flickered at the edges of her vision, and then the VR world before her came to life again. Only now it was different. The horseshoe consoles were gone, the Mediators were gone, and the analysis chamber had morphed into a huge room with vaulted ceilings, classical Greek columns, long wooden tables, and aisle after aisle after aisle of books, stretching as far as she could see. Out into infinity.
She was in a library.
A tall thin man wearing an old-fashioned suit and tie appeared before her. A librarian or, rather, a holographic version of one.
“May I assist?” he asked, in a dead-perfect approximation of an upper-class English accent.
“What is this place?” she asked again, suspecting she knew the answer already.
“This,” the man said, gesturing toward the library
behind him, “is a virtual representation of the Kanthropian database. You may submit input via console or voice.”
“Thanks.”
“Is there something in particular you wish to find?”
“Not just yet, thanks. I think I’ll browse a little.”
She scrolled the input pad and shot forward toward the stacks. Each aisle was labeled according to the Standard Starfleet coding system—there was one for interstellar relations, one for sociology, one for literature, one anthropology, one archaeology, one technology…
Curious, she turned down that one, and studied the shelves.
Here were books—no, not books she reminded herself, the virtual volumes she saw here represented entire databases of knowledge located elsewhere in the Kanthroian vessel—covering subjects like matter-antimatter power generation, weapons development, artificial consciousness, and…
Type-2 FTL drives? Interesting.
She reached for the first volume on that shelf, and a hand touched her arm.
She almost jumped right out of her skin.
“Access to these resources is forbidden for civilizations at level-four development.”
The librarian stood next to her, a reproachful smile on his face.
Hoshi nodded. That had been enough browsing anyway.
She asked for information on the Antianna. The librarian directed her to another aisle, to a slim shelf of books, dated by Earth year. The earliest was from 2147—eight years back. She pulled it off the shelf, and opened it.
The image of a Mediator stepped out of the book, and came to three-dimensional life before her. A holograph.
“Stardate 1121.8,” the Kanthropian said. “The Olane, a H’ratoi merchant vessel out of Procyron, bound for Coreida Prime, drifted off course owing to a computer error. Contact was lost. The wreckage of the ship was discovered by a Confederacy patrol several weeks later. Initial suspicions focused on Maszakian pirates and raiders from the neighboring Klingon Empire, but recovery of onboard ship’s data made it clear neither group was involved.”
Behind the Mediator, the image of an Antianna ship appeared.
“A recording of this vessel,” the Mediator said, “confronting and subsequently attacking the Olane was retrieved by representatives of the Thelasian Trading Confederacy. Over the next several years, sightings of such vessels, and similar attacks, multiplied. Beginning on Stardate 1212.6, these ships began sending the following transmission before attacking.”
The familiar Antianna signal—the fifty-seven pulses—sounded.
“The Confederacy’s leaders contacted Kanthropian Mediators on Stardate 1254.2. Translation efforts began immediately.”
The image wavered then, and disappeared, its place taken by a standard display screen, which summarized those efforts. Hoshi paged through the text. She read for quite some time, long enough to realize two things. First, there was nothing revolutionary about the Mediators’ approach to translation. They had better equipment—faster computers, more specialized software—but their efforts were focused on the same things as hers. A search for repeating patterns, the use of frequency analysis to assign meaning to those patterns (and here, she noted, their approach was exactly the same as the one taken by Starfleet linguists, the use of LMUs such as species name, individual name, intent, etc.).
Second, there was no mention of Theera anywhere in the database, which Hoshi found very odd. Her first thought was that the Mediators had spelled the name differently. So she tried the query again, using every variation she could think of. Still nothing. Then she tried Quirsh; then Andorian; then Lokune. She found a brief reference to that ship’s destruction, and an unlinked reference to the attack’s sole survivor. Theera. They spelled her name just as Hoshi would have.
It was all very curious indeed.
She was trying to determine her next step when all at once the library went dark around her.
An instant later, she was back in the real world. The analysis chamber.
Younger Emmen stood over her.
“Forgive the interruption,” he said. “But Elder Green will see you now.”
Hoshi nodded, and rose to her feet. She glanced toward the transparent wall at the far end of the chamber, and saw a handful of Armada ships circling a sparkling mass of wreckage.
“What happened to the Antianna ship?” she asked.
“The Antianna ship has been destroyed,” Emmen said. He turned his back. “This way, please.”
Emmen led her up a level and through an unmarked door, into a large room roughly the size of Enterprise’s main bridge, furnished with a single horseshoe-shaped console (a smaller version of the ones in the chamber) and a large display screen, on which video from the battle she’d witnessed earlier—the lone Antianna ship against the Armada—was playing.
“Wait here,” Emmen said, and then he disappeared.
With nothing else to do, Hoshi watched the screen a moment. She had no way of knowing for sure, but the footage seemed to be from earlier in the battle—prior to her arrival aboard S-12. The Antianna ship was motionless in space; a handful of Armada vessels circled around it. No weapons fire was being exchanged.
There was an audio track playing along with the footage. Barely audible, coming from the console—no, not from the console, from a headset lying atop it. She moved closer. It sounded to her a little like the Antianna signal, but something was different about it.
She picked the headset up and listened. Definitely the Antianna signal, but slowed down. Separated into its fifty-seven individual components. Interesting. She listened a moment, focusing in on each pulse as it played.
“If you’re wondering, we are searching for correlations between the signal pulses and the movements of the Antianna ship.”
Hoshi started, almost dropping the headset. She set it back down on the console, turned and saw Elder Green standing behind her. Or rather turned, looked down, and then saw Elder Green, who was much shorter in person than on the viewscreen. A whole head shorter—but for all that, no less commanding a presence. Close-cropped silver hair, intense blue eyes, the same coarse brown robe all the Mediators wore.
“As of yet our efforts have proven unsuccessful.”
“Elder Green,” Hoshi said.
“Ensign Hoshi Sato. I apologize for not greeting you sooner. It has been—as I’m sure you can guess—a busy few hours.”
“I understand, sir.”
“I believe the correct honorific in your language would be ma’am.”
A smile tugged at the corners of Green’s mouth.
Hoshi blushed. “Excuse me.”
“It is of no consequence.” The Mediator shrugged. “I want to thank you for coming to S-12. I am certain you will be of great assistance to us in our translation efforts.”
“Oh?” Hoshi said, curious. She’d hardly gotten that impression from the Mediators at the reception the other night.
“I have been reviewing your work for the last few days,” Green continued, “at least those parts of it which are accessible through the commercially traded databases, and have been quite impressed. You are a resilient young woman. A resourceful young woman.”
“Thank you, but…I’m not exactly sure what you’re referring to.”
Green clasped her hands behind her, and walked to the display screen.
“The Huantamos, for one,” she said, her back to Hoshi. “You certainly went to great lengths to learn their language. Living among them for—how long was it—six months? Learning the culture as well as the words—an essential skill for a linguist, that kind of empathy. Essential and in my experience, all too rare.”
Hoshi was too surprised to respond for a second. The Huantamos? That was years ago, she’d been back on Earth, working for a private foundation helping to catalogue some of the languages of the more remote Amazonian tribes, of which the Huantamos were one, and she had ended up living in the rain forest for…well, six months sounded about right.
“I suppose,” she said. “I mean,
thank you. Again.”
Green nodded. “You are welcome.”
“But I don’t know how that applies to this situation. I’m not—”
“Please,” Green said, turning to face her. “Allow me to finish.”
Green pulled a device of some sort from her robe then, and pressed a button on it. The image on the display screen—which now showed the Antianna ship firing on the Armada vessels closest to it—froze.
“Younger Emmen has given you details regarding our recent encounter with the Antianna?” she asked.
“I know that the ship was destroyed,” Hoshi said.
“Yes, it was. Not, however, before it destroyed eleven vessels in the Allied Fleet,” Green replied.
Hoshi blinked. Eleven? That was an awfully high number. It spoke volumes about the Antianna’s skill at warfare. And about the Allied Fleet’s chances for success in the conflict.
“One hundred twelve lives were lost as well.”
“I’m sorry,” Hoshi said, because she could think of nothing else to say.
“And as if I needed a reminder,” and here Green’s voice took on an edge, “General Jaedez has just finished telling me that loss of life on that scale is unacceptable. That the next time we encounter an Antianna ship, his policy will be to attack with overwhelming force, rather than allow the situation to unfold. To attempt negotiation. And that to me,” she shook her head, “that is the most unacceptable thing of all.”
Green turned and stared directly at Hoshi.
“For over four hundred years, the Kanthropians have served as Mediators to all races in this part of the galaxy. In all that time, no war of any consequential size between species has broken out—and those skirmishes that have inevitably developed, we have managed to end in short order. To have a conflict of this magnitude occur during my leadership of the order…” She sighed heavily. “It must not—it cannot—continue.”
Hoshi nodded. “I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
“I am glad to hear it.” She paused a moment. “I wish to speak to you regarding the Andorian. Technician Theera.”
Somehow, Hoshi wasn’t surprised to hear that.