Miracle Workers
Page 23
Of course, the whole point of the exercise was to lure the shii up the ladder to the SA dish. Something else I didn’t think of. Latest in a series, collect ’em all.
Then the shii’s paws changed shape, to something closer to a human hand. That made sense. It, and its smaller companion, had taken on the shape of a shii in order to blend in with the local fauna, and, being a machine, hadn’t changed shape to anything else since then because it hadn’t had reason to.
Now, though, it did. Armed with its newfound opposable thumbs, it clambered up the ladder. As soon as the shii was about three-quarters of the way up the ladder, I did some clambering of my own, onto the outer edge of the dish. The plan was to get the shii up on the edge also, then immobilize it.
It was a good plan. So, naturally, it went all to hell . . .
Excerpt from a letter from Razka on Sarindar to Marig on Nalor, sixteenth day of Sendrak, twenty-third year of Togh
. . . I watched as Commander Gomez stood on the dish’s edge. The monster shii climbed the rest of the way up. She raised her weapon. The creature, however, moved faster than expected.
Actually, that is not true. The creature had been moving fast all along. It is simply so fast that it’s difficult to comprehend just how fast it is. I suspect that Commander Gomez failed to anticipate this. One cannot blame her. This monster is very easy to underestimate.
The monster attacked her, knocking her weapon out of her hands. She lost her balance, and fell into the dish. The rifle, though, fell down the outside of the dish and plummeted to the ground.
This presented me with something of a dilemma, Marig. You see, Commander Gomez needed that rifle in order to stop the shii. Which meant that I needed to grab the rifle and get it to her. However, that meant getting much closer to the shii than I particularly wanted.
Besides, I knew that if I picked up the rifle, I would freeze again. I remembered Commander Gomez’s words. She told me of the engineer’s axiom that when garbage goes in, garbage comes out. I am like that. I hold a rifle, I freeze. It is the way of things.
But I promised Commander Gomez that I would continue to do my job. I had told her that that was why I stayed behind. Of course, that is not the real reason. The truth is that the other workers did not want me with them on the Culloden. They also did not want Commander Gomez with them. While not all of them believed her to be bad luck, enough of them did. And enough of those also thought I fell into that category. That was why they waited to take off until they knew that she was away from the camp. However, I did not wish her to know that. Besides, what I told her was true. I wanted to redeem myself, to do my job. I owed her that much. I owed myself that much.
So I ran for the rifle. I picked it up. And I climbed the ladder, trying not to pay attention to the scream of pain I heard from the inner workings of the dish . . .
First officer’s log, supplemental
. . . I tumbled into the inside of the dish, the duranium panels colliding with my body in a nastily bone-jarring manner. I managed to halt my descent, stopping myself at what appeared to be fifty meters down into the dish—or halfway to the center. It was about where the dish started to flatten out a bit and get less steep. I quickly tried to get my bearings, attempting to stand up and keep my balance. The rifle was nowhere to be seen, which made my life a helluva lot more complicated. The shii was still at the perimeter of the dish. Since I was unarmed, and could barely keep my balance, I was at a distinct disadvantage.
Then it started running down the dish toward me, its “paws” having morphed back into shii form, since that was much more efficient for decapitating.
This worked in my favor, actually, as the claws—which could easily get a grip on the crystalline surface of Sarindar—couldn’t grab hold of duranium. So, instead of loping gracefully down the inner surface of the dish, it slipped, slid, and tumbled down the dish, past me and toward the center.
I just needed to be able to press this advantage—unfortunately, no real opportunity to do so presented itself. Instead, I found myself facing this creature from fifty meters away, with it standing between me and my only legitimate means of escape—the center of the dish. There was a small hatch in the center that was my best bet for getting out of there—climbing up the edge of the dish wasn’t going to be much of an option.
Then the creature somehow managed to get enough of a grip on the dish to take one giant leap toward me. Starfleet training kicked in, and I managed to roll with the impact as it landed on me—rolling upward at first, then tumbling back down toward the center as gravity took over from the force of impact. I took a kick at it, but before I could, it slashed at my cheek. I cried out in surprise as much as pain, then followed through on the kick.
The kick didn’t do much to damage it—though it felt like it had done plenty to my foot—but it wound up being enough for the shii to lose its balance and start scrabbling around on the dish some more. Under other circumstances, I might have found it amusing, watching it try desperately to maintain some kind of grip, its arms flailing as each attempt failed.
I was standing in the middle of a concave dish at night on a crystal planet facing a creature out to kill me. I was armed with nothing more than a torn Starfleet uniform and a battered copy of someone else’s religious text—and my brain, which I had always relied on in the past. However, it was failing me now. There had to be some way to keep the creature still long enough for me to get off the dish, but I was damned if I could think of it. I needed to get the rifle back . . .
Excerpt from a letter from Razka on Sarindar to Marig on Nalor, sixteenth day of Sendrak, twenty-third year of Togh
. . . with the rifle slung over my shoulder, I started to climb. I am grateful that my great list of weaknesses does not include a fear of heights. Climbing the ladder was not difficult. In fact, I had done it several times before, during the project. No, the fear that gripped me had solely to do with why I took the climb. But I continued to climb. And I tried not to think about the scream I had heard. I also was hearing odd scraping noises.
I got to the top of the dish and I saw that the monster was trying to attack Commander Gomez. For her part, Commander Gomez was trying to get away from it. She was bleeding from her face and her uniform was torn and ripped.
As soon as she saw me, she shouted at me to shoot the monster . . .
First officer’s log, supplemental
. . . I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy to see anyone as I was to see Razka at that moment. I screamed at him to shoot the shii. Once he did that, everything else would come into place. He held up the rifle . . .
Excerpt from a letter from Razka on Sarindar to Marig on Nalor, sixteenth day of Sendrak, twenty-third year of Togh
. . . but once again I failed to shoot. I was programmed, it seemed. Nothing I could do could make me push the button. Not even the constant shouting of “Shoot it!” from Commander Gomez. Not even the monster finally being able to slash at both her face and her torso. I saw her strangely colored blood flowing from two wounds on her face now, as well as her side, and still she shouted, “Shoot it!” And still I could not pull the trigger.
Garbage in, garbage out.
I knew for sure that I was not someone who could fire a weapon. I was, however, still the aide to the head of the project. So I would do what I’d been doing. I would help her.
Commander Gomez was about seventy meters down the dish and about ten meters to my left. I could not trust my ability to throw the rifle to her. I could, however, trust gravity. I laid the rifle down on the surface of the dish and let it slide toward the center . . .
First officer’s log, supplemental
. . . the pain in my side was the worst I’d felt since that mugato sliced me open on Neural five years ago, but I managed to crawl the twelve meters to where the rifle was going to wind up. Razka wasn’t a fighter, and I respected that—I just wished he had realized it before that thing sliced me open. Speaking of which, it was still trying to maintain its grip on the
dish, and was hoping to use me as an anchor. It dug one claw into my boot heel as I was crawling over toward the rifle. I managed to yank my foot out of the boot, which sent the thing sprawling back down toward the center, once again trying to get some kind of footing.
The salty taste of my own blood from the two cuts on my cheeks, pain slicing through my entire torso like a phaser set on burn, I grabbed on the sonic rifle, rolled painfully onto my back, and saw the shii getting ready to pounce on me again.
It was almost funny—as it leapt through the air, I saw that my boot was still wedged in its claw.
I fired the rifle.
The shii was immobilized.
Unfortunately, its momentum was still carrying it through the air, and it landed right on top of me.
As bad as the pain in my side was before, it was a thousand times worse now. I cried out in agony.
But the good news was that the shii was just a dead weight on top of me.
A very heavy weight. I managed to push the thing off me—and it still didn’t move—and tapped my combadge. “Computer, time.”
The grating, atonal voice of the Nalori computer said, “The time is 0014 hours.”
I had cut it close—the quasar/pulsar window would close any minute. If I didn’t do this now, I wouldn’t be able to for fourteen hours. “Computer, activate ACB.”
I now had two minutes to get to the center of the dish before the annular confinement beam reached full power. . . .
Excerpt from a letter from Razka on Sarindar to Marig on Nalor, sixteenth day of Sendrak, twenty-third year of Togh
. . . I had thought that everything was fine. The monster was stopped as planned. Commander Gomez was activating the beam that would stop it. And now she was moving toward the center. I, too, moved toward escape. Her route would take her to the underside of the dish. Ironically, the door she was using was the same one that I had guarded at the secondary hospital. My own route was simply back the way I came.
Then I saw that the monster had started to move. And Commander Gomez hadn’t reached the hatch yet. I reached for the tricorder, hoping I might be able to stop it. Unfortunately, I fumbled with the device and dropped it. It fell dozens of meters to the ground. So, instead, I called the commander’s name . . .
First officer’s log, supplemental
. . . and it was a good thing he did, because I was able to whirl around and fire one last time at the creature. Unfortunately, doing so seemed to rip open my wound, and I cried out. Then I heard the steady thrum that indicated the ACB was about to come on-line. If I stayed where I was, I would be reduced to my component atoms inside about half a second.
I dove for the hatch . . .
Excerpt from a letter from Razka on Sarindar to Marig on Nalor, sixteenth day of Sendrak, twenty-third year of Togh
. . . and then I started climbing madly down the ladder. I had no idea if Commander Gomez had heard me or not. My main concern at that point was my own survival. That, and the death of the monster shii.
I heard the sound of the mighty engine that powered the dish. Forces that were intended to displace atmosphere and create a vacuum sliced through the air. The noise was deafening. The light was blinding. When we had first tested the beam, I had been standing at a safe distance. Now I was at anything but. I don’t think that my ears will ever cease ringing. Nor do I believe that the spots will ever disappear from in front of my eyes.
But I have to say it was a spectacular view. The nearby crystalline trees reflected the shimmering beam, which shot into the night with such intensity that I thought it would bisect the entire galaxy.
A lifetime later, the beam finally ceased. There was no sign of either Commander Gomez or the monster shii.
Second officer’s log, Lt. Commander Kieran Duffy, Shuttlecraft Archimedes, Stardate 53291.0
I’m on final approach to the planet Sarindar. According to the Nalori Republic representative that Captain Gold talked to when the da Vinci entered Nalori space two hours ago, all contact with Sarindar was lost several days ago. They had come across the transport ship, the Culloden, that had been assigned to the project. The Nalori had assumed that everyone else on the planet had been killed, but the testimony of the workers on the Culloden, combined with sensor readings the da Vinci took, show that the interference around the planet has gotten too heavy for even com signals to get through. I just hope that Commander Gomez is okay.
Personal log, Lt. Commander Kieran Duffy, Shuttlecraft Archimedes, Stardate 53291.1
I landed on Sarindar to find the remnants of a tent system, some broken-down machinery, a very large concave dish— —and Commander Gomez and a Nalori getting very drunk on Saurian brandy.
As soon as she saw me, the commander ran toward me and leapt into my arms. Before she did, I noticed that her uniform was torn in dozens of places and looked (and smelled) like it hadn’t been laundered in weeks, she had two nasty cuts on her face, and she was clutching her right side as she ran.
Then she kissed me.
I would say that the commander is alive and well and doing just fine.
Personal log, Commander Sonya Gomez, U.S.S. da Vinci, Stardate 53291.5
I had been quite convinced that Razka and I were going to get completely plastered long before anyone rescued us. But I didn’t care. I was so giddy from actually defeating the shii and knowing that I was going to live, that the fact that we would probably starve to death if someone didn’t show up soon wasn’t something either of us wanted to think about. Then I saw the Archimedes come swooping down out of the atmosphere. It was the most glorious sight I’d ever seen. (Razka said it was the second-most glorious, as he gave first prize to the ACB wiping out the shii. Sadly, I didn’t get to see that, as I was under the hatch at the time.)
Part of it was the brandy, part of it was euphoria—and part of it was sheer stupidity, given my torso wound—but a big part of why I ran into Kieran’s arms was simply because I didn’t want to ever let go of him.
I learned a lot on this mission, and found out a lot of things about myself that I didn’t like. Primary among them was that life is too damn short to let the good things get away.
What Kieran and I had on the Enterprise was a good thing. There are probably dozens of good reasons why we shouldn’t start up our relationship again, but right now, I can’t think of a single one of them.
Now we’re back on the da Vinci. I’ve been in touch with Senator Moyya, and he actually apologized to me. Apparently he wasn’t showing the recordings I sent along to the rest of the senate because he believed they were fakes. One of his fellow senators insisted that he look at the full communiqués from Sarindar, and suddenly the senate thought that maybe their initial reaction was a bit on the harsh side.
Unfortunately, by the time the senate had realized their mistake, all communication with Sarindar had been lost, thanks to worse interference than usual from the quasar/pulsar combination. That’s also why the da Vinci’s com signal was so patchy. They had, in fact, dropped their mission to Trivas like a hot potato and come to rescue me.
The current plan is to assign new workers to the camp, with Razka now in charge, at my recommendation. He will follow the work schedule I laid out, and—without the two shii to terrorize the workers—the SA should finally be finished. The senate has also promised that Starfleet will be allowed to aid the team that studies and harvests the chimerium—and, best of all, they’re willing to talk about allowing Starfleet safe passage through to Sector 969. Which means that the mission Captain Scott gave me back on Earth has actually been fulfilled.
This should be good news. I just wish it hadn’t come at the expense of so many lives.
I was seriously tempted not to have Dr. Lense get rid of the two scars I got. Razka said that they made me look like a Nalori who’d gotten his coming-of-age scars, and, in a sense, he was right. But I decided to get rid of them anyhow. Keeping scars is an affectation, suffered mostly by people with more mental difficulties than I’m willing to put on display.
I did it after Captain Gold debriefed me and I had talked to Senator Moyya.
Now I’m in my quarters, having been instructed by both Dr. Lense and Captain Gold to relax. But I can’t sleep. I keep thinking about Zilder and Kejahna and J’Roh, and the score of others who died under my command.
I guess the only way I can make their deaths have any meaning to me at all is to live.
And I intend to do just that.
“Gomez to Duffy. Please report to my quarters.”
End log entry.
Star Trek®: Starfleet Corps of Engineers
MINIPEDIA
by Keith R.A. DeCandido
This “minipedia” covers information from the first eight installments of Star Trek: S.C.E. (in other words, the stories reprinted in Have Tech, Will Travel and Miracle Workers). It follows the same format as The Star Trek Encyclopedia: A Reference Guide to the Future (updated and expanded edition) by Michael Okuda & Denise Okuda (1999). Some entries or parts of entries are taken or adapted from the Encyclopedia, for which the author humbly thanks the Okudas. In addition to the Okudas, the author would like to thank GraceAnne A. DeCandido, Christie Golden, John J. Ordover, Terri Osborne, and Marco Palmieri for their assistance in compiling this reference.