by David Mack
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for those fighting to keep the dream alive
Justice and judgment lie often a world apart.
—Emmeline Pankhurst, British suffragette
My Own Story (1914)
Historian’s Note
* * *
The events of this story take place in May 2255, approximately one year before the Shenzhou’s historic mission to the binary stars, and one year after the Enterprise’s first mission to Talos IV.
1
* * *
Goddamn it. What now? Jon Bowen took the steps two at a time, climbing the switchback staircase as if it and his ass were on fire. The operations level was four flights up from his quarters, but he was winded after only two. Most days he would have waited for the lift, but most days the Arcadia Explorer platform wasn’t being hammered by a Sirsa III tropical maelstrom that caused its underwater drill to spew a flood of alarms.
A trio of mechanics barreled past Bowen on their way down the stairs. He put his back to the wall to let them pass, since they were burdened with tools, cables, and bulky emergency gear. None of the tool-pushers acknowledged him as they ran by. That suited him fine. Beads of sweat rolled from under his thinning blond hair and down his forehead while he caught his breath. As soon as the stairwell was clear, he continued his climb, swearing under his breath at the aching in his lower back, the cramping muscles in his thighs, and the lightness in his head.
The closer he got to the top of the stairs, the more clearly he heard the platform’s alert siren, a buzzing sonic assault that had been optimized by acoustic engineers to cut through the roar of howling winds and crashing waves. The deck was wet near the door that led outside, and the corridor to the operations center was steeped in the white noise of rain lashing the platform’s exterior. Ignoring the flashing orange lights and continuing sirens, Bowen hurried down the narrow passage into the crowded confines of ops.
Blue light from banks of displays contrasted with amber flashes from the emergency lights overhead. Crew members manned every duty station, a rarity in the middle of the night. Bowen headed for the center situation table and shouted, “What the hell’s going on?”
The night-shift supervisor, Lewa Omalu, yielded her place at the situation table to Bowen, handing him the coordinator’s headset as she stepped aside. “The drill hit something.”
“That’s what it’s for, isn’t it?”
Omalu pointed at a flashing error indicator on the master systems display. “It’s stuck.”
“Sonofabitch.” Bowen grumbled harsher profanities under his breath as he magnified the sensor image from the bottom of the drilling shaft. “What the hell stops a plasma drill?”
“The same duranium-rich composite that drew us here in the first place.” She pointed with one dark-brown finger at a cross-section image of the seabed. “We’d just broken through the last sedimentary layer when the drill stopped dead.”
None of the numbers in the display made sense to Bowen. “So pull it out.”
“What part of ‘stuck’ did you not understand?” Omalu noted Bowen’s sharp glance and pulled back on the reins of her temper. “I’ve got every tool-pusher I can spare patching in backup power now. As soon as we reverse the drill free, I’ll pull it up for a damage check and send down a probe to see what we’ve got.”
“Sounds good.” Bowen let go of his own bad mood. This was just another night on the job, another routine SNAFU—nothing to get worked up about. “Will the storm be a problem?”
Omalu glanced toward the wide transparent-aluminum window at the south side of ops, noted the lightning-strobed barrage of wind and rain that pummeled the Arcadian Explorer, then threw a skeptical look at Bowen. “You’re kidding, right? It’s just a rainstorm. I used to sail through worse every summer when I was just a girl in Lagos.”
“That’s what I thought. Just wanted to check.” He wondered if he would be able to get back to sleep if he returned to his quarters now, or if he should stay awake since daybreak was only a couple of hours away. He asked Omalu, “Any coffee left in the kitchenette?”
“What do you think?”
“I think people on this rig need to learn that when you kill the joe, you make some mo’. It’s just common goddamned courtesy. You know what I’m—” The overhead lights went out as the deck heaved and pitched, throwing Bowen against the situation table. Omalu and half a dozen other members of the operations team tumbled and collided with one another against a bank of consoles. The buzzing alert was replaced by a whooping siren, and in an instant nearly every indicator on the master systems display turned condition-critical red.
Outside the southern window, a fireball erupted from one of the fuel pods, and a cargo crane swung away from the platform and plunged half its length into the sea.
Bowen reached across the situation table to open an internal channel. “Engineering, this is ops! Status report!” All he heard was static. He switched to a different channel. “Drill team, ops! Report!” Dead silence.
Omalu clawed her way back to Bowen’s side. “Did something hit us?”
“How should I know?” Bowen struggled to make sense of the chaos unfolding on all of the platform’s situation monitors. “We’ve got fires on sublevels six and seven. No readings at all below that.” He pivoted toward the drilling supervisor. “Ramayan! What’s happening?”
“Seismic activity directly beneath us,” said the Mumbai-born drilling supervisor, his voice pitched from shouting over the din of alarms and an ominous rumbling that resonated through the platform’s superstructure. “Rapid rise in the seabed! It’s pushing the drill back up into—” His report was cut off by another explosion outside the window. The bent and fractured drill housing shot up through the platform, erupted from its roof, and triggered a cascade of structural failures. Bowen watched in horror as the center of the Arcadia Explorer vanished into the fresh cavity wrought by the expulsion of the massive drill assembly.
“Holy shit,” Bowen muttered. Louder, he demanded, “Damage reports! Now!”
First to respond was Omalu. “Rising seabed confirmed. All of our support pylons have fractured.” She patched in a feed from one of the exterior safety sensors. An image of the platform appeared over the situation table, revealing that the massive facility’s two lowest levels had already collapsed and vanished into the churning water below—taking with them more than two hundred personnel, including most of the engineers. The image tilted as the platform lurched again, knocking Bowen off his feet. Omalu white-knuckled the center table. “If this rig shifts more than six meters in any direction, it’s gonna sink.”
&n
bsp; Terror made a jumble of Bowen’s thoughts. The Arcadia Explorer stood on pylons of duranium-reinforced thermoconcrete. They should have been impervious to any natural disaster this planet could dish out. Now the entire facility was moments away from vanishing beneath 2,400 meters of water.
There was no time to effect repairs, and with most of the engineers already gone there was no one to make them. Bowen had no choice. He pressed his palm against a biometric pad on the master systems display. “Computer, sound the evacuation order, all decks!”
“Confirmed,” the computer replied in a masculine voice with a dry London accent.
Bowen turned from the console and stood tall. “Everyone, get the hell out of here! Get to a pod, a shuttle, anything! Move!” The room cleared within seconds. Bowen had to nudge Omalu to get her away from the systems display. “It’s over, Lewa! We gotta go! Now!” They nearly fell over each other on their way to the nearest exit, and Ramayan Chandra was right behind them as they left ops and charged outside into the storm.
Omalu froze at a T intersection in the catwalk. Bowen started to point her toward the right, but then Chandra pulled them both in the opposite direction. “This way!”
Bowen protested, “But the pods—”
“Are too far,” Chandra said. “The shuttle’s closer! Come on!” The slender engineer took the lead and guided them through blinding sheets of rain that stung Bowen’s face.
Just as Chandra had promised, around the nearest corner was a narrow bridge to a landing platform where a shuttle was parked.
The three of them ran toward it and fought to keep their footing as the rig shifted again. Omalu’s feet slipped on the wet metal bridge, and she nearly plunged over the railing into a jumble of broken metal beams above a churning mass of black water. Bowen grabbed Omalu’s shirt and pulled her back onto the bridge. “You all right?” Rain pelted her face as she nodded. He pulled her into motion and they resumed their run toward the shuttle.
Chandra reached the small craft first and threw himself into its pilot’s seat. Omalu stayed behind to seal the hatch while Bowen strapped himself into the shuttle’s command seat. “Get us in the air,” he snapped at Chandra, “before this—”
Calamity preempted his warning. With a sound like thunder the rig slid off its shattered pylons and tilted toward the sea. Outside the cockpit canopy, a nightmare unfolded. Entire sections of the rig sheared apart, spilling metal and bodies into the ocean.
On other landing platforms, shuttles and other small spacecraft slid over the edges and sank into the raging sea. Feeling gravity take hold of his own shuttle, Bowen realized he was very likely witnessing a preview of his imminent fate.
“Ramayan—!”
“I know, Jon! Shut up!”
Chandra cold-started the engines and fired the maneuvering thrusters. Bowen clutched the shuttle’s console as the tiny craft shot toward the water—and then he gritted his teeth as Chandra pulled up on the controls, forcing the craft into a high-g climb. Its belly and port stabilizer grazed the waves, kicking up spray in their wake.
Then Bowen and Chandra saw the bulk of Arcadia Explorer collapsing toward them. Time seemed to slow as Chandra made a gut-twisting turn coupled with acceleration and a barrel roll, and guided the shuttle through a ragged gap in the rig’s broken superstructure, like a fragile thread passing through a needle made of death. Lightning bent across the black sky ahead of them, and for half a breath Bowen thought they had exploded—
Then the glare abated, his vision adjusted, and he knew they had made it out alive.
As the shuttle banked into a steep turn, Bowen looked down to see the last of the rig splinter apart and vanish in a series of fiery blasts that within seconds were swallowed by the sea. Oily clouds lingered over the froth-capped waves where the rig had stood just minutes before.
The water churned—then parted to reveal a massive form, one alien and monstrous, like some terrible leviathan of ancient myth, newly free of the ocean’s embrace. Segments of the rig tumbled off its curved back and slid once more into the briny depths.
“My God.” Bowen pointed down at the monstrosity. Chandra regarded it with confusion and amazement; Omalu’s reaction was one of abject horror. Before they had a chance to study its details, the storm head swallowed their shuttle, which hurtled away from the disaster shrouded in darkness, thunder, and scouring rain.
Omalu slumped to the deck between Bowen and Chandra. “What was that thing?”
“I have no idea,” Bowen confessed. “But we’d better have a good answer to that question before we face the governor, or we’re all gonna be screwed.”
2
* * *
It was a commanding officer’s privilege to be fashionably late, and tonight Captain Philippa Georgiou was making the most of that perquisite. On some level, she knew her fastidious preparation of her dress uniform had been an act of procrastination, one born out of a desire to avoid a circumstance about which she was still in denial. The same had been true of her languid pace as she left her quarters and boarded a lift to the officers’ lounge, which was located on a lower deck, on the other side of the Starship Shenzhou’s saucer section. Now she approached the door to the lounge and found each step more difficult to take than the one before.
Then the portal parted ahead of her, and an up-tempo jazz melody of piano, clarinet, bass, and wire-brush percussion flowed into the corridor, along with a low murmur of many voices in polite conversation. Enlisted personnel from the ship’s services division roamed with trays of drinks and appetizers, attentive to the appetites and needs of their guests. It was an upbeat but dignified soiree, one befitting its guests of honor and the occasion.
Georgiou noted that most of the other officers already held flutes of Champagne, so she snagged one off a tray as she passed by, and thanked the server with a smile. She turned and took in the room. Off to one corner, the ship’s new communications officer, Ensign Mary Fan, was demurely enduring the flirtations of the lanky chief engineer, Lieutenant Commander Saladin Johar. Across the room, near the viewports that looked out upon the dusky northern hemisphere of Ligot IV, some manner of good-humored debate was unfolding between junior tactical officer Lieutenant Kamran Gant, conn officer Ensign Keyla Detmer, and operations officer Lieutenant Belin Oliveira. Whatever point Gant was making, it had the two women alternately shaking their heads and breaking out in peals of laughter.
Through the milling camouflage of junior officers Georgiou spotted the ship’s soft-spoken chief medical officer, Doctor Anton Nambue, making small talk with senior tactical officer Lieutenant Michael Burnham. It struck Georgiou as peculiar that the normally taciturn Burnham—whom Georgiou had treated as her protégée ever since Ambassador Sarek had talked the Vulcan-educated human into accepting a Starfleet officer’s commission six years earlier—was engaged in jovial banter with the good doctor. Maybe she’s finally learning to loosen up a little, Georgiou hoped. That would be a miracle long overdue.
At the far end of the room from Burnham stood her longtime professional rival and rhetorical foil, Lieutenant Saru. The Kelpien science officer’s impressive height—just over two meters—ridged skull-like visage, and mildly awkward backward-leaning posture made him hard to miss, even in a crowd. Saru seemed determined to monopolize the attention of the party’s two guests of honor, first officer Commander Sonnisar ch’Theloh and second officer Lieutenant Commander Itzel García. The Andorian’s smile was betraying signs of strain, and García’s focus volleyed between Saru’s steady prattle of polite banalities and the empty chasm of her glass.
Looks like a rescue mission is in order, Georgiou realized.
She snagged another glass of Champagne on her way across the lounge, and with confidence and grace insinuated herself between Saru and his conversational hostages.
“So as one might imagine,” Saru said, not yet having noted Georgiou’s presence, “my decision to apply a Kelpien design aesthetic to diplomatic quarters intended for the Pahkwa-thanh ambassador was met
with a less than enthusiastic . . .” His anecdote trailed off as he observed the shifts in ch’Theloh’s and García’s attention. He pivoted to glimpse Georgiou, then recoiled with a subtle jolt. “Captain! Forgive me, I didn’t realize you’d joined us.”
“It seemed the merciful thing to do.” She handed her extra flute of Champagne to García. “You looked like you could use another.”
García set aside her empty glass and accepted the fresh drink with a grateful nod. “Too kind, Captain.” After a sip, she asked, “Time for your big speech, then?”
“Am I supposed to give a speech?” Georgiou feigned surprise, but ch’Theloh’s and García’s smirks of amusement made it clear they weren’t buying her charade. Saru, however, met the moment with his typical blank expression, as if he couldn’t laugh without express permission or a direct order. “Fine,” Georgiou said, moving past her two senior officers so she could put her back to the wide viewport and address the entire room. She picked up a teaspoon from a nearby table and tapped her glass with it.
Its bright chiming silenced most of the room, except for a small pocket of junior officers in the back, who were too busy laughing to note the signal. It was an oversight Lieutenant Saru addressed without delay. He faced the clutch of freshly minted officers, struck an imperious pose, and barked, “Ensigns! Be quiet! The captain wishes to speak!” His order stifled the jocularity in the corner—and chilled the mood in the rest of the room to boot.
Georgiou masked her discomfort. Worst opening act ever.
She put on a smile to ease the tension. “First, thank you all for coming out this evening. As I’m sure you all know by now, we’ve gathered to bid a fond farewell to our esteemed first officer, Commander ch’Theloh, who’s leaving us to accept his own first command, on the Starship Tereshkova. And, as if being deprived of my trusted Number One of four years wasn’t painful enough, he’s gone and poached our second officer, Lieutenant Commander García, to serve as his Number One.” She faced ch’Theloh. “Sonny, you’ve been a superb second-in-command, and you’ve been a good friend. As much as I hate to see you leave us, it makes me happy to know that the Tereshkova is going to have such a fine commanding officer.” Pivoting toward García, she continued, “Itzel, you’ve come such a long way in so short a time. At sixteen you left your small village in the Yucatán for Starfleet Academy. And it seems like it was only yesterday when you transferred aboard the Shenzhou as a relief operations officer. Now you’ll be second-in-command on one of the fleet’s most storied vessels. I couldn’t be prouder of you.” Glancing at ch’Theloh, she added, “Of both of you.” She lifted her glass high, and the other officers in the room mimicked her gesture. “Our loss is the Tereshkova’s gain. Join me in wishing Captain ch’Theloh and Commander García many years of boundless wonder as they embark on their next great adventure together. Cheers!”
