by Jeffrey Lang
January 9, 2386
Open Space
En Route to Robert Hooke
Miles O’Brien thought about his mother. He did not think about her often or, at least, no more often than he thought proper. He had been sad when she died, mourned her, and then moved on. O’Brien had always considered his love for her to be, as she had been, voluminous and well balanced. Thinking back on it, the only thing about her death that bothered him had been the obituary: Megan O’Brien died quietly in her sleep after a short illness. Inside his helmet, O’Brien shook his head. His mother had never done anything quietly in her entire life. If there was a state of mind that could be defined as quietly, Megan O’Brien had always existed on the opposite pole from that theoretical condition.
He wasn’t sure why he was thinking about his mother, other than the plainly obvious reason that there had been a great deal of discussion about the Mother over the past few hours. Since firing the thruster and getting under way, O’Brien had been thinking about his entire family—wife, children, parents, brothers, and sisters—but, more than any of them, his thoughts kept circling back to Megan. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she was the only one of his immediate family who had died. Or maybe it was because he was once again facing the possibility of his own death.
No one who had been in battle let the prospect of death slow them down when confronted with enemies to fight, comrades to protect, or machines to repair. Unfortunately, none of these circumstances described his current situation.
The thrust against his back was barely perceptible. The same, alas, was true of the glimmer of light that he knew to be the Hooke hull.
O’Brien checked his velocity and distance to his destination. He checked the remaining fuel in the thruster pack and the remaining oxygen in his suit. He did the math in his head, then mentally erased it, and then did it once more. This may have been a mistake, he thought.
The communicator chimed. O’Brien said, “Hello, Nita.”
“How much longer?” Bharad asked.
This was the fourth time in twenty-five minutes she had asked. The math was still the same, so the answer had not changed. “Another twenty-three minutes,” O’Brien replied.
“Can’t we go faster?”
“Like I explained earlier, yes, we can. But then I can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to brake so that your transport doesn’t just tear out the bottom of the station. It’s going to be dicey as it is.”
“Something just peeled away from the hull,” Bharad said. “Something large.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t anything important.”
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
In his head, O’Brien thought, Because if it was important, you wouldn’t be calling me. To Bharad, he said, “Ships like the Wren have lots of extraneous parts on the hull: sensors, communication arrays . . .” He stumbled. “Flanges,” he resumed. “Don’t worry.”
“I thought the tow cable might have torn loose.”
“No worries, Nita. Everything’s secure.” O’Brien wanted to say something better, something more reassuring, but now he was thinking about his wife, wondering what Keiko would say if she knew what he was doing at that moment. Out in space with a thruster on his back, tugging a disintegrating spacecraft back to an infected space station. Most likely, she’d say, in a mildly disappointed tone, “Miles O’Brien, you’re a damned fool.”
A sour knot twisted in his gut. When was the last time he had consumed anything that wasn’t liquid and alcoholic? Might not be any other options anytime in the near future. He wondered if Nog had made it past the interference and was on his way back. He wondered whether the Hooke was holding together. He wondered if Captain Maxwell was still alive.
Feeling a lump of self-pity and woe forming in the pit of his gut, O’Brien did what his mother had advised him to do. He began to sing:
“The minstrel boy to the war is gone,
In the ranks of death you’ll find him;
His father’s sword he has girded on,
And his wild harp slung behind him.”
A voice crackled over the comm channel. “That’s an awfully sad song, Chief.”
O’Brien turned to look to his left and then to his right. Nog was coming up beside him, skillfully piloting his own thruster pack. A second cable was stretched out behind him. He must have fixed his harpoon as he had flown past the Wren. When his cable went taut, O’Brien applied a little more thrust, confident that the two of them would be able to slow down the transport when the time came. He checked his velocity and did the mental calculation. He smiled, though only when his head was turned away from Nog. “Aye,” he replied. “It is a bit. It’s a song we used to sing back in the day on the Rutledge. Captain Maxwell liked it.”
“Is there more?”
“There is, but it doesn’t get any more cheerful.”
“Another time,” Nog said.
They flew along in companionable silence for a few minutes, Nog nervously checking their velocity and course. O’Brien watched the stars until Nog settled, and then asked, “What happened with the Amazon? I saw her go into warp.”
“You did,” Nog said. “After you left the ship, it occurred to me that I could program the runabout to get clear of this distortion zone and send a message to the station. There was another thruster pack—I’m going to find out who stowed two of these on a runabout when we get back—so I figured I’d come and lend a hand.”
“Ah,” O’Brien said. “Well, thanks. Appreciate it.”
“Should have thought of this sooner.” He checked their course again, then added, “I’m sure Doctor Bashir would have thought of it sooner. I’m just not as smart as he is.”
O’Brien let the sentiment echo around inside his helmet for a few moments. “Well,” he offered, “who is, Commander? Who is?”
“True,” Nog agreed.
Neither spoke for what was probably a long spell, but O’Brien found that he didn’t mind the quiet. At the appointed time, the pair of engineers began to shift their configuration in an attempt to bring the Wren to a safe stop. Before heading off on the necessary vector, Nog added, “If we survive this, I swear I’m never going anywhere with you ever again.”
Ops Center
Robert Hooke
“There are a lot of uncertainties here,” Maxwell said as he tugged the legs of the environmental suit up over his trousers. “A lot of things we don’t know.”
“This is true,” Finch allowed. He was seated in the chair in front of the primary environmental control panel, which showed a slowly spinning schematic of the Hooke, replete with blinking colored swaths to indicate problem areas. There were, Maxwell noted, lots of blinking red and orange blocks, and not very many yellow or green bits. The situation was rapidly going to hell.
The ops center had fared better than most of the rooms they had visited on the other decks, though this was likely because there were fewer pieces of fragile lab equipment here. “Just for fun,” Maxwell said, standing and slipping his arms into the sleeves, “let’s list some of them. Seeing as we’re not doing anything else.”
While no longer semicomatose, Finch had lapsed into recalcitrance. “Fine,” he murmured. “Let’s.”
Maxwell pushed his hand through the suit’s rigid cuff and extended his index finger, counting off. “We don’t know how much of the Mother is still upstairs in your lab.”
“True,” Finch agreed. “Though we believe she was jettisoned.”
“Belief is not evidence. And we don’t have any working sensors in there, do we?”
“Sabih made sure of that.”
Maxwell frowned, but did not reply. On the trek back to ops, he had been thinking about Sabih and his disastrous attempt at theft. While he hadn’t known the young man well, he had never struck Maxwell as either particularly enterprising (beyond the venture capitalist mod
el) or larcenous. Current circumstances, alas, did not lend themselves to additional investigations. One thing Maxwell knew for sure was that he wasn’t going to allow Finch into the lab without being carefully supervised. As insurance, he had locked the second environmental suit into a cabinet for which the station owner no longer had the access code. “And if any remnant of the Mother is up there, do we know if she would be attracted to this suit’s energy signature?”
Finch unfolded his hands and tapped together the tips of opposing fingers. He stared into space. “We do not,” he drawled. “Although evidence indicates she is attracted to radioactive energy sources. Your suit runs on a battery with a modest energy signature. I doubt she would find it appetizing, especially with so many other tasty morsels to consider.”
As if on cue another section of the Hooke’s hull changed from orange to red on the display. Maxwell felt a shudder through the soles of his boots, though, thankfully, the gravity remained stable. “So,” he said, “good news for our side. Any other bits you’d like to offer?”
“It will be very cold,” Finch said. “Do not tarry. Your suit was not meant for prolonged exposure to vacuum.”
“Noted.”
“Otherwise, my only question is simply this: What do you hope to accomplish besides determining whether the Mother is still in residence?”
“And retrieving Sabih’s body,” Maxwell said.
“Naturally. And that.”
“I want to see why the radiation blast didn’t fire,” Maxwell said. “I want to see if someone tampered with it. I want to see if it can still be used.”
“Really?” Finch asked, his brows knitting together. “To what end?”
“I should think that would be obvious, Doctor,” Maxwell said, standing up and lifting the recycler onto his back. “If I can, I’m going to reset it so we can fire the damned thing.”
“And kill the Mother?” Finch had come back to life again. Maxwell doubted if Finch realized it, but he was gripping the arms of his chair with both hands.
“If the opportunity arises,” Maxwell said, snugging up the straps on the harness. He mentally added, And with a small amount of pleasure.
“You couldn’t,” Finch said through gritted teeth. “You mustn’t!”
“I could,” Maxwell said, retrieving the helmet and brushing off the last of the packing material. “And while I’m not sure if I must, I’m pretty sure it would make me feel a lot better.” He inspected the helmet’s visor to see if a layer of thin film protected it. He found one, which meant the helmet had never been used. Peeling it away, Maxwell wondered how long the gear had been sitting in Zerkowski’s storage closet, unused, unchecked.
He glanced at Finch, who was silently seething, and wondered if the big man’s rage would get him out of the chair. Maxwell half wished it would. Though Finch probably had twenty or thirty kilos on him, Maxwell felt confident he could take him if it came down to an altercation.
Finch disappointed him by clenching the chair arms and turning back toward the monitor. Another square of the station’s hull turned from yellow to orange. “We’re not going to last long at this rate,” Finch said.
“Then I’d best get on with it,” Maxwell said, fitting the helmet into the suit collar. The servos meshed and he felt a rush of cool atmosphere flow into the helmet. It smelled like lavender soap. He found the communicator control on the left gauntlet and tapped it. “Is this working?”
Finch looked at him and nodded.
“Are we reasonably sure the hatch into the lab is sealed?”
“We are,” Finch said. His voice sounded tinny through the helmet’s small speaker.
“When I open that door there.” He pointed to the closed hatch that led to the foot of the short stairway. “We won’t lose all the air in here? It’ll serve as an airlock if I close it behind me?”
“It should,” Finch said. “But why would you care? I’m the one who doesn’t have a suit.”
Maxwell considered his point. “That’s true,” he said. “But then I wouldn’t have anyone to chat with.”
“How dreadful for you,” Finch drawled.
Maxwell walked to the hatch, all the while trying to find his balance. The suit’s joints were stiff, and he felt like he might tip over at any moment. He tapped the door’s control stud, half expecting it to beep at him ominously, but, no, it swooshed open with only a small pop. He glanced back at Finch to make sure he hadn’t collapsed. The station owner was still upright and alert, watching Maxwell attentively.
Suddenly, Maxwell felt very exposed, very at risk. If Finch could somehow seal the door behind him, then he would have to . . . do what? Maxwell had the environmental suit. If he must, he could figure a way out of the lab and back into the station through one of the many, many gaps in the hull. He might have to contend with the Mother in some fashion, but there was no proof yet that she . . . it was dangerous as long as you weren’t housing a radioactive power source. So, things are going my way, Maxwell concluded as he mounted the stairs. Nothing to do but recover a body and fire a small thermonuclear device. Janitor’s work, really.
Reaching the top step, Maxwell stopped and considered his options. Firing a thermonuclear device might be a bad idea. Considering the creature seemed to like radiation.
He stopped in front of the door and pondered, but then decided he wasn’t required to make a decision at that moment.
Light. He would need light. Feeling foolish for not checking it earlier, Maxwell found the control stud for the torch embedded in the suit’s right gauntlet. It lit up, seeming unreasonably bright in the narrow space. He touched his helmet about the faceplate and felt another lamp, but couldn’t find the control switch to turn it on. Probably won’t need it, he decided, though he didn’t like the idea of having to hold up one arm all the time to see where he was going.
He laid his left palm on the door and felt the chill of vacuum radiating through it.
When Maxwell tapped the control stud, once again his expectations were defied, and the door silently swooshed open.
Emergency lights cast long, distorted shadows. Maxwell moved his arm back and forth, looking for familiar shapes. He hadn’t visited Finch’s lab often, so he wasn’t sure which console contours were correct and which had been disrupted or distended by the Mother’s escape.
The tank. He knew the tank was in the middle of the room. Sabih had been there when he died. He would use the tank to get oriented. Maxwell half turned and extended his arm to frame the tank in the beam from his torch. He expected to find nothing more than a frame with cracked sides and the frozen remains of the Mother smeared against the inner walls, but such was not the case.
“Finch,” Maxwell whispered. “It’s still here.”
“You’ll have to be more specific, old man. What is still there?”
“The Mother,” Maxwell said, speaking louder. Why shouldn’t he speak in a normal tone of voice? It wasn’t like there was atmosphere to carry his voice. Or like it would be able to hear him even if there was. “It’s still here. Floating. How is that possible? Shouldn’t the liquid have been sucked out? Shouldn’t it be frozen?” Other questions rose up out of the murk of his mind, many of them quite logical and sensible. His calm state of mind was surprising, considering how completely and totally disturbed he was feeling at that moment. Starfleet training is still holding strong, a distant part of his mind said.
Finch did not reply immediately, though Maxwell heard him breathing deeply, just shy of panting. “It’s possible,” he said finally, “that Sabih reprogrammed the environmental controls.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know,” Finch said. “One cannot predict the actions of a criminal. Or the young. Can you describe her condition?”
Maxwell rolled his eyes and thought, Yes, it’s a blob. Next question? But he knew Finch was asking for actionable information,
so he tried to comply. “I don’t really know what it looked like before, but it’s floating in the middle of the tank. Tendrils are moving slightly. Some of them are pressed up against the walls of the tank. Wait . . .” He stepped closer and shone the torch onto the face of the transparent surface. “What’s the tank made out of?”
“A form of transparent aluminium.” Finch pronounced the word like a British person would. “Reinforced with ceramic fibers. Very durable. Why?”
“It’s cracked,” Maxwell said. “But the cracks are very fine. It seems to be exerting pressure against the cracks. I think I see . . .” He had to move at a forty-five-degree angle away from the surface of the tank wall and shine the light from above to make sense out of what he was seeing. “There’s something coming out of the tank: a thread or fiber of some kind.” As much as Maxwell hated the idea of moving closer, curiosity had gotten the better of him. He shifted his stance and lifted his right arm at an awkward angle.
The knuckles of Maxwell’s gloved fist brushed against Sabih’s face.
He was standing up, his head canted at an awkward angle. Sabih’s eyelids were open, the muscles around them twitching, but the eyes looked like frosted glass, discolored by broken and distended vessels. His mouth moved slowly, soundlessly.
Maxwell stared. He imagined he could feel the young man’s breath through his gauntleted hand, though, of course, that was ridiculous. There was no atmosphere, no medium for breath to move through, and no heat to be transferred.
He watched Sabih’s lips as they moved over and over again in the same pattern, even though no other part of him moved. He looked, Maxwell decided, like a marionette, one controlled by an amateur puppeteer. Maxwell took a cautious step away, the better to see the nightmare.
Poor, dead Sabih’s lips and tongue kept making the same movements over and over, slowly, but precisely. Connections clicked into place inside his head. Words were shaped.
Let.
Me.
Out.
Chapter 14
