by David Mack
A man who looked as if he had spent his life tinkering with gadgets coated in black grease raised his hand, then spoke before Kolova had a chance to realize he was interrupting her. “I sure hope our next move is finding a way off this rock!” The crowd rumbled in concurrence.
“Not an option,” Kolova said with as much force as she could muster. “We scrapped our transports to build better cities. Stronger cities. So, no—running’s not an option for us. Our first task is to figure out what Starfleet’s doing about the Juggernaut. If they’re dragging their feet, we need to light a fire under them.”
One of the police officers, a woman whose name tag read EICHORN, stepped forward. “Governor, I understand why you’re emphasizing the need to motivate Starfleet, but I think we need to start talking about what’s going to happen to us after all this is over. Legally, I mean.”
“Yeah,” added Tanzer, the engineer. “Assuming we live, how screwed are we?”
Ishii moved to stand beside Kolova, as if he could physically shield her from criticism. “There’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that Starfleet has already acquired a great deal of evidence regarding the presence of an extinct indigenous civilization here on Sirsa III, and that means there’s going to be a full investigation by the Federation Council.” Groans and profanities rose up like a swelling wave. The chief of staff raised his hands, gesturing for calm. “The good news is that most of their legal wrath is likely to fall upon the Kayo Mining Consortium”—he shared a pessimistic look with Kolova—“and upon myself and the governor. Most of you will not likely face any individual charges.”
Grease-man asked, “But we’re going to lose the colony, right?”
“Our charter is likely to be revoked, yes,” Ishii said. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t have alternatives. Most of you could just stay put while the Federation installs a new interim colonial government. They might ask you to draw up your own charter, or they might hand you off to another sponsor. But if you stay, you’ll have to find new ways to make a living if you want more than a subsistence lifestyle, because all mining ops will be suspended pending a new planetary survey by Starfleet and the Federation Colonial Authority.”
Eichorn was a portrait of dismay. “What if we defect? Get some other power to raise its flag on this rock? I bet the Orions would love a shot at all this mineral wealth.”
“Sure they would,” Bowen said. “As long as you don’t mind living like a serf under the tender mercies of an Orion merchant prince. Me? I’ll take a rain check on that.”
“As would I,” added Bowen’s right-hand gal Omalu. “I would rather spend ten years in a Federation penal colony than live for one year as an Orion’s peon.”
Kolova felt the meeting slipping off subject, and she was determined not to let that happen, not with so much at stake. “Everyone, stop. The Orions won’t plant a flag if doing so means open war with the Federation, so just forget about that. The hard truth is that if we live through this, I’m probably going to a penal colony. I will do everything I can to make sure none of you goes with me. But first we have to survive long enough for that to be an issue.” She pointed at Tanzer. “Is this the safest part of the undercity?”
“Define ‘safest.’ ”
“When the Juggernaut sends its next attack and starts blowing holes in everything, is this where you would want to be?”
“All things being equal, I’d rather be on a different planet.”
She cowed him with a glare. “Well, you’re stuck on this one with the rest of us, so get your goddamned head in the game. When the shit hits the fan, where’s the safest place for us all to be? Here? Or somewhere else?”
Grease-man intervened. “Madam Governor? If I knew the world was ending topside, I’d want to be as far below the auxiliary reservoir as I could get. Tons of metal and thermo-concrete down there, and millions of gallons of water. Good barrier against blast effects and radiation.”
That worked for Kolova. “You know how to get there from here?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then you’re on point, Mister . . . ?”
“Tassin. Roy Tassin.”
“Lead on, Mister Tassin.” Kolova ushered everyone into motion. “The world’s about to catch fire, and I want to be well away from the flames when it does.”
* * *
Fine tendrils of lightning danced between the radiant sphere and the softly glowing overhead of the Juggernaut’s central passageway. At each thick-ribbed interval, the crackling sphere dropped and spun, throwing off sparks as it ducked beneath the protruding structural supports. Then, on the other side, it would bob upward once more to skirt the ceiling, all the while teasing it and the lower portions of the oval corridor with luminous jolts of electricity.
Following a few paces behind the orb, Spock could not help but compare his and Burnham’s following of the orb to a fish being tempted by the shine of a lure.
At his side, Burnham remained fixated upon the holographic entity, which she had persisted in calling “Thumper,” on account of the powerful, low-frequency pulses it emitted in synchronicity with its momentary increases in brightness. Spock wondered whether it might hold some special fascination for her because of her human neurophysiology, one that eluded his predominantly Vulcan mind. He observed her discreetly for a moment before he spoke.
“May I ask a question?”
She split her attention between Spock and the orb, which at least reassured him that she wasn’t entirely under some form of hypnotic control. “Ask away.”
“Why do you think the Juggernaut dispatched this hologram to us?” He tilted his head toward the passageway ahead of them. “There do not appear to be any intersections or diversions for us to consider, so it is unlikely to have been intended as a guide.”
His observation seemed to intrigue her. “Do you have a hypothesis?”
“Perhaps. It manifested shortly after I began to question the wisdom of pushing deeper inside the vessel.” He regarded the bobbing orb with dispassion. “I believe it to be a distraction.”
“You might be right,” Burnham said. “But in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve been committed to exploring the inside of this thing from the moment I saw it. And since we’re on a rather tight deadline, I would’ve insisted on continuing forward, orb or no orb.”
He respected her honesty, as well as her tenacity and clarity of purpose. Shortly after the orb cleared its next inverse hurdle, it halted and traveled in a circle against the ceiling. Spock and Burnham stepped underneath it and gazed upward. “What is it doing?” Burnham wondered.
“Perhaps it—” The orb vanished in a flash of light, taking Spock’s train of thought with it.
Then he felt a vibration in the deck, the kind that resonated throughout his body—and only too late did he pinpoint its source, behind them: “Sir!”
Burnham looked back in time to see the passageway constrict behind them, just beyond the structural support rib. She extended her arm in front of Spock and ushered him half a step away from the sudden obstruction. It solidified with hardly a sound.
“Well,” Burnham said, “I guess forward really is our only option now.” She started to walk onward, only to pause when her foot struck another barrier. Surprise and a momentary flicker of anger animated her features as she recoiled from the next segment rib. Then she reached out and ran her hand across what was now revealed to be a bulkhead adorned by a two-dimensional holographic image of the corridor they had expected to see continuing onward.
“A holographic trompe l’oeil,” Spock said. “A crude but effective deception.”
“More than just a deception, Spock.” Burnham knocked on the image. “A trap. And a solid one, at that.” She took out her communicator and flipped open its grille. “Burnham to Shenzhou. Do you read me, Shenzhou? . . . Burnham to Enterprise. Please respond.” She listened for a few seconds, then put away the device. “Nothing, not even static.”
Spock nodded. “It would seem the Jugger
naut intends for us to either remain here indefinitely, or to engineer our own means of escape.”
“A reasonable assumption,” Burnham said. “Though I have to wonder what—”
A piercing tone assaulted Spock’s ears.
He winced at the pain, purely out of reflex. Next to him, Burnham gritted her teeth and clapped her hands to her ears, but she remained in agony. The sound came from everywhere at once—the bulkheads, the overhead, from ahead and behind. Covering his own highly sensitive ears did Spock no good. He lowered his hands and reached for his tricorder.
Burnham spoke to him, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. Then he saw blood trickle from her ears and her nostrils—and he felt warm sensations issuing from his own nose and ears. He palmed dark green blood from his upper lip.
Whatever was generating this terrible sound, it had been weaponized to penetrate flesh and bone—and unless he and Burnham found a way to stop it or to escape this chamber in the next sixty seconds, he had no doubt that it would kill them both.
15
* * *
The tone was a spike through Burnham’s ears, a knife cleaving her thoughts. No matter how hard she focused on the teachings of her Vulcan mentors that pain is a product of the mind, something to be mastered by reason and discipline, all those lessons abandoned her now. All she knew in the world was white-hot agony. It had put her on her knees. Humbled her like a child.
It took every remaining ounce of her Vulcan conditioning to suppress her body’s urge to panic. Squinting, she saw Spock reach for his tricorder and struggle with its controls.
She tried to shout over the screeching, “Spock! Do you have a plan?”
He looked at her, his face wrinkled from discomfort and confusion.
Blood issued from her ears, then from her nose. Warm and tacky to the touch, it was proof that her pain was no illusion. Then she saw Spock’s ears and nose start to bleed, and she knew the sonic attack was no petty obstacle: it had been designed to kill them.
Forced onto her hands and knees, she crawled toward Spock. He slumped back-first against a bulkhead and landed in a sitting pose on the deck, his legs splayed in front of him. All the way down he continued trying to change the settings on his tricorder. But as soon as he came to rest on the deck, the portable scanning device fell from his left hand, and he pitched over to his right and sprawled across the deck, unconscious.
Pulling herself forward through sheer willpower, Burnham felt as if her skull were cracking apart, its fragments collapsing under the onslaught of that merciless shriek. Her body yearned to succumb, to surrender to the pain and sink into the comfort of black oblivion, but she refused to grant herself that mercy.
Her hand landed on Spock’s tricorder. She pulled it closer and strained to focus her eyes on its settings, in the hope of deducing what Spock had been attempting before his collapse. In a glance she understood his plan and knew what had to be done. She tweaked its settings with trembling hands. There would be no time to fine-tune it. It would either work the first time, or else she and Spock would die, here and now.
She activated the high-frequency audio sensor and triggered the noise-canceling wave. Instantly the crushing and piercing sensations in her head abated, and within seconds the hideous shriek had abated to a tremor in the air. It was a simple, direct solution. Good thing Spock thought of it as quickly as he did. If only I had been a bit quicker— She put a stop to that line of thinking. No time now for regret or blame. Stay focused, remember your training.
Burnham cleaned the blood from her face and used her tricorder to assess her condition. No lasting damage, she was relieved to see. Nothing a few hours in sickbay won’t fix.
She kneeled beside Spock. Using the end of her sleeve, she dabbed the green blood from his chin and upper lip, then from his ears and neck. A quick check of his vital signs with her tricorder revealed that he also had escaped any serious lasting injury, though she suspected he might have a headache for the remainder of the day. She put away her tricorder and tried to rouse him in a firm but gentle manner. “Mister Spock, can you hear me?”
His eyes fluttered open. He did a poor job of masking his pain as he sat up, letting slip a wince that confirmed Burnham’s theory about his cranial discomfort. Rubbing the nape of his neck, he said, “I see you finished my noise-canceling wave.”
“I did. Once I saw your partial settings, I grasped your intent.” She rested her hand on his back to help steady him. “Do you feel ready to stand?”
“I believe so. But I would appreciate your assistance.”
She slipped her hands under his armpits and added her strength to his as he got back on his feet. Upright once more, he dusted himself off and smoothed his blue uniform tunic.
“Thank you,” he said. “Now, if I am not mistaken, our next challenge”—he raised an eyebrow before he finished—“appears to have been resolved for us.” He nodded toward the forward end of the chamber. “The path beckons.”
Burnham turned to see that the bulkhead with the hologram had vanished at some point while they had been focused upon each other. The passageway was now open, and it climbed along the back of the Juggernaut in a gentle slope. The only difference she noted was that the luminescence in the corridor ahead ranged in hue from deep gold to burnt orange.
“The color’s changed,” she said to Spock. “Do you think that’s significant?”
“Unknown. It might be a purely aesthetic element—or it could signify increased levels of difficulty and danger.” He picked up his tricorder. “The high-frequency tone has ceased.” He switched the device back to its default passive-sensor state. “Time is short. We should go.”
Troubled by the calamity that had nearly finished them, Burnham paused. “In a moment.” She eyed their surroundings with a new degree of suspicion. “This Juggernaut has been on this planet for millions of years. And if, as I suspect, it was sent to lure in members of the indigenous primitive culture in order to test them . . . I have to wonder: Why would it feature a trap that can only be survived through the use of advanced technology? The natives wouldn’t have had any.”
“No, but we did,” Spock said. “The Juggernaut has already demonstrated an ability to adapt and modify its drones to suit their intended prey. It is logical to assume it is equally capable of modifying the challenges it poses within itself, in order to present an appropriate level of difficulty for those who come to it. As I recall, when we first entered, the holographic orb performed what seemed to be an invasive scan of our communicators, tricorders, and phasers.”
“So it knows what our equipment can do,” Burnham said, following Spock’s reasoning. “Now it means to find out what we can do.”
An unfazed nod from Spock. “So it would seem.”
“Never a dull day in Starfleet.” She tucked away her tricorder and led Spock into the vermilion passage. “Let’s go see how it means to kill us next.”
* * *
The carvings formed a cathedral of bone and marble. Being rendered in the monochrome of Saru’s enhanced goggles did nothing to diminish the majesty of the ancient monument, which had been formed from the fossilized ribs of some gargantuan beast and curved slabs of polished stone. Unlike the rest of the rocky maze Saru and Una had traversed to reach this place, the floor under the enormous curving bones was tiled with polished bits of marble and glass. It lacked the deliberate art of a mosaic, but it was no less beautiful for its evocation of natural chaos.
“Most remarkable,” Una said, her head swiveling from one point of interest to the next. “None of the other areas of habitation exhibited this level of sophistication, size, or detail.”
It was a labor for Saru to interrupt his admiration of the space in order to make some scans of it with his field tricorder, a slender rectangular frame of burnished metal around a responsive touchscreen. “The age of this construction is consistent with the other parts of the settlement we’ve examined.” He applied some filters and watched the data shift in real time. “The s
tone elements are definitely marble, unlike anything else in this cave. I would surmise that all of the marble pieces in this structure were obtained elsewhere.”
Una reviewed some scans on her own tricorder, whose offset beveled edges appeared more prominent in her smaller hands. “I’m comparing the trace elements and other chemical markers in the marble to the geological scans made during the original planetary survey.” After a moment, a nod. “The only region that has this kind of marble is over three hundred kilometers from here. That would support your hypothesis.”
“I wonder if this was part of their settlement before they encountered the Juggernaut, or if it was something created later.” Saru lowered his tricorder and envied the xenoarcheologists who would soon be dispatched to this planet to answer questions such as his, among others. Part of him wanted to join them . . . but then he felt the irresistible attraction of a galaxy filled with wonders, all awaiting him and the crew of the Shenzhou.
A few meters ahead of him, Una stopped, faced a long curved wall of marble, and pointed her tricorder at it. “I think I found something.” She returned the device to a pouch on the outside of her pack. “Switch the frequency on your goggles to C-band.”
Saru did as Una had directed. In the blink of a filter transition, everything changed. Nearly every centimeter of the enormous wall was decorated with art, images scribed not in pigment but etched directly into the stone. “Why didn’t we see this before?”
