Have Tech, Will Travel

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  As he made his way toward the science station, Duffy decided to put Stevens’ question back on him. “Well, how do things look to you?”

  “How technical do you want to get, Duff?” Stevens grinned. He tapped several commands into his console to bring up a graph with a series of fluctuating bars. “We’ve finished our modifications to the deflector dish, and with even a lowstrength infusion from the beam, we should have a nice stable area of the Defiant ’s hull to latch onto with the tractor beam.” Stevens tapped once more and the bar graph dissolved. “Curse me for being overconfident, Duff, but this ought to go pretty smoothly.”

  Duffy nodded to Stevens and smiled, shrouding his sincere hope for a trouble-free mission in a quip. “Smoothly? That would be a refreshing change.” As he turned away from the science station, he became aware that he was the object of someone’s attention, and that someone wasn’t happy.

  Of course, I’d have to consult a calendar to figure out the last time ol’ Core Breach was happy , Duffy joked to himself as he turned his attention to the da Vinci ’s security chief, Domenica Corsi.

  “Concerns, Commander?”

  Corsi maintained her stiff stance near the security console, moving no muscle except those needed to deepen her frown. Duffy decided to meet her there rather than forcing her to call across the bridge; that would be the more “ captainly” way to handle it. As he took one step toward her, however, Corsi made it clear she wasn’t above raising her voice.

  “You seem pretty relaxed, Commander Duffy.”

  He hustled his step to meet Corsi, hoping his proximity might prompt her to tone down. “I want everyone to relax, Corsi, including you. Okay, mostly just you.” He decided to add a smile in order to ease the remark’s effect.

  Unfazed, she replied, “Never mind that we’re in hostile space with a Tholian ship off our bow. You don’t even have our shields up or our weapons charged.”

  “That’s at Carol’s and Captain Gold’s recommendations,” he countered. “We do that, and the Tholians will be sure to get curious. And just what would we say in response? That we’re nervous?”

  “You know it’s against regulations.” As if sensing her own breach of protocol, Corsi lowered her voice. “I want people to be prepared on the bridge, not calm and folksy as you would have them.”

  Bristling at the implied criticism, Duffy snapped back, “Tell you what, Commander—next time, you can sit in the big boy’s chair.”

  He caught himself, his ears ringing with reminders of Sonya’s advice against getting baited by Corsi. On the surface, the crew almost universally saw the security chief as a hard-nosed stickler for protocol and procedure. But, as Sonya said, a person such as Corsi was never bad for a captain to have at his or her disposal. Duffy knew that in a pinch, he could turn to Corsi for advice and that he could count on her to act quickly and correctly.

  And one thing he did not want now was her noticing his unease with command.

  “Wait a minute,” Duffy said and stalled. “That was uncalled for.” He tried another smile, holding his hands out in supplication. “Listen, I’ll toe the command line if you remind me of regulation breaches later, okay?” Corsi nodded, seemingly placated for the moment, and Duffy again noted one of the reasons that he would never pine away for the center seat.

  It’s not a starship that a captain has to manage so much , he reminded himself. It’s her crew .

  A hail from the Defiant pricked up Duffy’s ears. The voice was Sonya’s and she was just whom he wanted to hear, if only as a mental pick-me-up.

  “ Defiant to da Vinci. Commander Duffy? We’re ready on this end.”

  Duffy smiled. “And ahead of the Tholians schedule by, oh, twelve minutes and change. They ought to appreciate your efforts, Commander.”

  He looked in the direction of Carol Abramowitz, who was seated at the communications console. As a cultural specialist, she was pretty used to the post although it wasn’t her usual one. Duffy had seen her talk the crew’s way through plenty of encounters before; Carol’s background made her the perfect blending of a diplomat and a crewperson with Starfleet training at heart.

  “Carol, alert the Tholian commander that we’ll be starting our operation momentarily,” Duffy said, stifling a more natural urge to phrase things as requests rather than orders.

  She nodded and tapped the console before her. “Commander Nostrene, this is the da Vinci . I know this is—”

  “You are twelve minutes and eleven seconds premature for your next scheduled communication,” came a reply in a synthesized voice that Duffy recognized as the echoing timbre assigned by the computer to all Tholian communications. He’d had plenty of opportunities to hear the native tongues of races across the Alpha Quadrant: the guttural barking of Klingon, the almost lyrical qualities of Vulcan and Romulan, and the clicks and grunts peppering High Tellarite that almost always made him chuckle. But he had never heard the actual sounds of the Tholian language. Sonya once likened it to the screech of a tritanium blade on glass.

  “Yes, Commander, but forgive our haste as we need to inform you that we are ready to begin the salvage operation,” Abramowitz said in an even, almost apologetic tone. “Our away team is prepared, and we know that time is of the essence for you and the Assembly.”

  “Understood,” replied the computer voice that Duffy assumed was Nostrene. He figured the Tholian commander must have drawn this plum assignment from his higher-ups through to the bitter end, as Nostrene’s name was attached to the Tholian reports passed through Starfleet Intelligence to the da Vinci . Nostrene’s ship had been the first Tholian vessel on the scene of the rift’s reopening and the Defiant ’s reappearance.

  “Just to remind you, Commander,” Abramowitz said, “we expect this to be a routine maneuver. We will project a pair of beams from the da Vinci . A narrow, bluish one will be our tractor beam and will come from the front of our ship. The wider, yellowish beam that will stabilize the molecular integrity of the trapped ship will come from our deflector dish. Neither beam will affect your ship. With any luck, we’ll need just a few minutes to pull the Defiant free. Then we’ll be on our way.”

  “Proceed,” was all Nostrene said before cutting the channel.

  Duffy exchanged an amused look with the cultural liaison. “I’m really going to miss these stimulating conversations when this is all over.” He was about to order Stevens to begin when his combadge chirped, startling him from speaking.

  “Gold to Duffy. I need to interrupt your operations a moment.”

  Duffy felt his pulse quicken at the captain’s words. Had something gone wrong? Not according to readings on their end. He tipped his head toward the bridge’s ceiling, as if that might make him more audible to the crew on the old starship. “What is it, Captain?”

  “Have Carol patch me through to the Tholian commander,” said Gold. “And feel free to listen in. You all may find this interesting.”

  Duffy and Abramowitz met each other’s gaze as if on cue. He nodded once to her as she tapped commands on the console before her. “ Commander Nostrene, please prepare for communications from Captain Gold on board the Defiant .” She paused for a moment until the Tholian commander signaled his readiness to proceed, then said, “Captain Gold, go ahead.”

  “Commander Nostrene,” Gold said, “we’ve discovered something onboard the Defiant that I believe will make this operation one of historical significance for both our peoples. We are transmitting for your interpretation our tricorder readings of a device we found stowed here. We’ll be pleased to turn it over to you for return to the Assembly as a token of our appreciation for your help in retrieving this starship.”

  Duffy noted Abramowitz’s quick tapping as she not only forwarded the tricorder data to the Tholians but recorded it in the da Vinci ’s memory banks as well.

  The speakers rang with the computerized timbre of Tholian voice. “Received and acknowledged.”

  Abramowitz, focused on readings from her console, said, “Captain, the tra
nsmission’s been cut from their end.”

  Duffy smirked and spoke up himself. “I’m sure there’s a Tholian word for ‘thank you’ somewhere in our linguistics records. In any event, Captain, we’re definitely interested in seeing everything you’ve found over there.”

  “Maybe not everything, Mr. Duffy.” The sober tone of his captain’s voice gave the engineer pause before the full realization of Gold’s remark hit home. The Defiant was, after all, more than simply an unsolved mystery or engineering challenge. The ship was also a tomb, the final resting place of more than four hundred men and women who had given their lives in service to Starfleet. Above all else, Duffy reminded himself, that one fact could not be forgotten in their haste to accomplish the recovery mission.

  Gold’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “ Commander, if you’re ready on your end, let’s get this show on the road.”

  Duffy tried to exude some confidence, for Gold’s benefit as well as his own. “Once more unto the breach and all that, Captain. We’ll have you out in no time.”

  “Mazel tov, Mr. Duffy.”

  As the connection was severed, Duffy started toward Stevens’ station, then paused. A quick check of the bridge showed that everyone was at their stations, ready to go. They all knew their jobs and had everything under control. With that taken care of, he realized it was time for him to step up and do the job Captain Gold had given him, and there was only one place where that could be accomplished.

  Tightening his lips, he turned instead to the steps leading to the captain’s chair. Without a hesitation or flourish, he settled into the center seat. He imagined the chair embracing him, the authority and responsibility it represented reaching out to envelop him and fuel him with the confidence he needed to see this mission through.

  Hey, this doesn’t feel so bad.

  “Mr. Stevens,” he said, not looking away from the viewscreen, “ready the navigational deflector.”

  As Stevens tapped at his console, Duffy spoke again. “ Da Vinci to Defiant . Commander Gomez, alert the away team that we’re bringing you out. Prepare your thrusters, please.”

  Gomez was quick to reply. “Ready on your mark, Commander.”

  Stevens signaled his readiness as well. Duffy paused a beat to center himself, then, “Go with the deflector, Mr. Stevens.”

  Duffy watched the main viewer as a wide, sparkling beam burst from the bottom of the screen and shot arrow-straight to the Defiant . The gold hue of the beam mingled and swirled with the neonblue glow of the trapped ship’s saucer section, stirring colors and flashing energy in ways that Duffy had never seen. In the center of the maelstrom grew a patch of dirty white. As he stared, the white took on definition as precisely spaced crosshatches of black appeared within. He watched the very hull of the Defiant integrate at the deflector beam’s touch.

  “Commander,” Stevens’ voice broke across the nearly soundless bridge, “she’s emerging from the rift and the hull is phasing as projected. We have enough room now to grab her.”

  Duffy spoke more loudly than even he expected. “Tractor beam at maximum, Fabian. Now!”

  He watched a thin blue beam etch a path across the gold of the existing one. While they appeared intertwined from the bridge, the tractor beam actually skated meters above the dish emission, narrowing its proximity to the integrity field as it approached the Defiant and struck the ship exactly where the white hull plates coalesced within the colorful swirl. The patterns worked to soothe Duffy a bit as he turned his attention to the pair of consoles before him.

  “Pull us back, Mr. Wong. One-quarter impulse.”

  Ensign Songmin Wong tapped Duffy’s orders into his helm console and Duffy felt the da Vinci lurch, rocking him forward in his seat. As he leaned back in the chair, Duffy saw the integrated area of the Defiant ’s saucer growing at a much faster rate than before. The ship waxed into whiteness as if emerging from an eclipse.

  Could it be this simple, even after all these years?

  Duffy called out to the viewscreen, “Sonya, how are you doing?”

  The speaker came to life with a laugh. “We’re fine, Kieran. Even with the heads-up, you guys still managed to knock Pattie off of her feet. You need thrusters?”

  “Seems to be good on our end without them,” Duffy said, nearly able to read the markings on the underside of the Defiant ’s saucer section, faded but still stark against the white of the hull. “We’ve almost got the pri—”

  Wong interrupted. “Commander, I’m getting some resistance now. It’s growing, almost as if something’s pulling harder the farther we get the Defiant out.”

  Here’s where the fun begins, Duffy cracked to himself. “Is this new?”

  Stevens answered first. “Not new. The pull from inside the rift was slight from the very beginning and was almost undetectable.” He checked more readings. “Yeah, it’s growing exponentially, Duff. We’ll have to fight to get her free.”

  “Kick it up to half-impulse, Mr. Wong,” Duffy said, “and intensify that deflector beam, Fabian. I don’t want to rip a chunk out of the saucer just to win a tug-of-war.”

  Duffy didn’t want to contemplate a stalemate just yet as he hoped the away team could help. “Stand by on thrusters, Sonya. Seems as if we’ll need all of the kick we can get.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  Tholians were not known as a race that wasted a lot of movement. Their unusual physiology, evolved over millennia spent on their home planet, did not lend itself to ease of mobility beyond the confines of that world. Conditions aboard ship favored their life support needs, of course, but generations spent exploring and colonizing other planets had long since conditioned Tholians to conserve their energy for only the most appropriate of occasions. Nostrene, however, cared for none of that as he paced the length of his private quarters. He had decisions to make, and precious little time to make them.

  His analysis of the data supplied by the Starfleet engineers regarding the device they had found in the abandoned ship’s cargo hold had led him to believe that the mechanism was of Tholian origin. However, he had not recognized it, and his surprise was compounded when a search of his ship’s computer yielded no useful information. That revelation had prompted him to transmit the data and his report to the High Magistrates personally.

  Their response had been alarming.

  “We are to destroy the derelict?” asked Taghrex, Nostrene’s second in command. From where he stood near the computer station terminal set into one wall of the room, he studied the message Nostrene had just received from the High Magistrates on the home world. He made no effort to hide the astonishment in his voice.

  “That is the command of the Magistrates,” Nostrene replied. “As soon as we are able to achieve a weapons lock, we are to either capture or destroy it as circumstances permit. Either of these options will obviously require us to destroy the recovery vessel as well.”

  “We risk retaliatory action from the Federation,” Taghrex said. “Is that truly a wise course?”

  Nostrene did not reply immediately, instead taking an additional moment to study his subordinate. Like Nostrene, his body was of a similar reddish hue as befitting someone of noble upbringing. Taghrex had served with distinction under him for many cycles, more than the Tholian commander could easily remember. He would make a fine leader one day, of that Nostrene was sure, once he learned to curb his rash impulses to openly question the wisdom or dictates of those superior to him.

  Taghrex was correct about one thing, Nostrene decided. Their next action could well anger the Federation, perhaps endangering the fragile peace that had been established between the two governments.

  As if sensing that he may have overstepped his bounds, Taghrex said, “If the Magistrates are willing to risk such a response, then the situation we face now must be dire indeed.”

  Much better, Nostrene mused. There was potential in the young officer yet. “You are correct,” he said. “It seems that the Starfleet engineers have stumbled across something
that should not exist, at least not any longer.”

  Part of a prototype defensive system, the landbased web generator had been designed to capture the inhabitants of a planetary installation without harm to them or the structures they occupied. At least, that was what the Assembly’s official position had been. Once seized, prisoners from captured areas could then be easily transported to facilities properly designed to detain them while Tholian forces moved in to occupy the newly acquired territory. However, the system had only been employed once outside of strictly controlled testing environments, and the results had been catastrophic.

  The official conclusion from the investigation following the incident was that the system’s designers had not adequately foreseen the radical physiological differences encountered in the wide variety of life forms in this region of the galaxy. Having read the report that the Magistrates had sent along with their message, Nostrene considered the findings to be ludicrous. How could scientists of such caliber create a revolutionary nonlethal weapon, designed for use against all manner of species, and not take into account the biological varieties inherent in such an attempt? It was incomprehensible to him, though it was an opinion he doubted he would ever share with anyone else.

  In this particular case, the “radical physiological differences” encountered had been Klingon, and not even a military target, but instead a civilian agricultural colony. The Empire had been furious to learn of the settlement’s destruction, swearing vengeance on those who had been slaughtered. The true nature of what had happened had never been discovered by anyone, and the Magistrates had kept it that way all this time.

  “Only now, the secret is threatening to be revealed because of the Starfleet engineers,” Taghrex concluded, absorbing what his commander had told him with degrees of awe and uncertainty.

  Nostrene nodded. “During their investigation, the surveyors of the colony discovered that one of the generation system’s emitter arrays was missing. We now know that the Federation ship currently trapped in the rift took it. Reports did place the vessel in that part of space. They must have come across the colony, investigated it, and found the destruction wrought by the web generator.”