by David Mack
Ilucci piled on with nigh-manic optimism, “That’s right! This ain’t over! Was it over when the Romulans invaded Organia? Hell, no!”
Theriault mumbled to Terrell, “Romulans?”
“Forget it, he’s rolling.”
Ilucci continued, “And it ain’t over now! We’re gonna beat this thing! I guarantee it!”
Beiana blinked at Ilucci, then turned away. “I hope you’re right.” He asked the group in a more hopeful tone, “What comes next?”
Dastin grumbled, “With our luck? A supernova.”
Theriault turned to reprimand him for stooping to gallows humor in front of the Austarans, only to have her rebuke cut off by one of the astronauts.
“I’ll take that bet,” said Major Septen. “I think the planet will break like an egg.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said astronaut Nasutas. “My money’s on volcanic apocalypse.”
“You’re all wrong,” Pylus the engineer said. “The way this day’s been going? I’ll bet whatever’s left of my beach house that our planet’s antimatter twin appears, resulting in their instant and spontaneous mutual annihilation.”
Mufungo interrupted with raised hands. “Hold on! How are we supposed to collect on these bets if the planet vanishes in a flash of free radicals?”
“Don’t spoil the fun,” Beiana told the professor. “It’s the end of the world! Live a little.”
Specialist Heelar raised her hand. “Can I put a month’s salary on our star imploding into a black hole before it releases the CME, then sucking our planet to its doom in a singularity?”
Engineer Nelonnuk clapped his long-fingered hands. “Yes! That’s what this apocalypse needs—a flair for the dramatic. Nicely done, Heelar.” She took a bow at his sardonic praise.
Theriault turned in dismay toward the captain. “Please tell me we’re not going to spend the last eighteen minutes of our lives making uncollectible bets on how we’re all about to die.”
Terrell sighed. “What do you want, Number One? It’s the end of the world. Live a little.”
• • •
Overwhelmed by the pessimism in the control center, Torvin backed out of the huddle and slipped out the door to the corridor outside. He couldn’t understand how the Austarans could be so cavalier about death. Not just their own, but that of their whole world, every last member of an intelligent species. It was too vast, too horrible a tragedy for him to grasp.
The last thing he wanted to do was cry, but he felt tears escape the corners of his eyes. He sleeved them away, but more followed. Between the anguish of confronting his own ending and that of his friends on the ship, as well as billions of innocent souls, and contending with the stinging pain that engulfed his back from the nape of his neck to the bottom of his spine, he was running out of strength to rein in his emotions.
All his life he’d been mocked for being too sensitive, too empathic, too quick to show his feelings. Other young males on Tiburon had called him hurtful names that implied his maleness was a sham. Even within the supposedly enlightened ranks of Starfleet, his masculinity had been impugned by other recruits since his first day at basic training. Never once had he understood. Why were people so threatened by his ability to feel strongly? Or by his desire to love deeply and live his life open to the emotions of others? Why were so many people so afraid of showing grief, or fear, or compassion? When did stoicism become such a precious commodity?
He felt his survival instinct trigger an upswell of rage in his heart. It wasn’t fair that he had to die so young, when there was so much more he wanted to do with his life. But as quickly as the heat of anger had shored him up, the chill of nihilism tore him back down. Who was he to complain of unfairness? What was more fair than death? Sooner or later it came to everyone and everything. The universe itself would eventually decay irreversibly into entropy, and, if science was to be trusted, even time itself was destined to expire.
His ultrasensitive Tiburonian ears heard the approach of soft footfalls. He noted the implied weight in each step’s echo, the tempo of the stride, and knew at once who it was. Embarrassed by his unraveled state, he wiped the tears from his cheeks and composed himself. When he felt ready to meet ridicule head-on, he pivoted to face Ensign Taryl. “Sir?”
A confused wrinkling of her green brow. “Tor? I saw you leave. You okay?”
“I’m fine. I just”—a deflective shrug—“I just needed some air.”
She didn’t seem convinced. “There’s no shame in being scared.”
Too many times he’d fallen for such verbal traps. He refused to take the bait again. “Scared? No. I’m just tired. And the burns on my back are still a bit raw. But I’m okay.”
Taryl eyed him with naked skepticism. “Are you? ’Cause your eyes look a bit redder than usual. I mean, I’m not saying you were crying—not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
He averted his eyes from hers. “Is there something I can do for you, sir?”
Now she was upset. “See? This is why I don’t get involved with other people’s problems. I came out here looking to help, but all I get is attitude instead of gratitude.”
His fear and shame turned to guilt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a jerk about it. It’s just, y’know, a private moment. It’s all going wrong, and it feels like there’s no way out, and—”
“I get the point, Tor. But in case you tuned out, the rest of us are gonna die, too.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s just—” He forced himself to hold back. Experience had taught him the dangers of oversharing. It was an error he wasn’t eager to repeat.
Taryl wasn’t content to let him leave his confession unfinished. “It’s just what?” She stepped in front of him and forced him to look into her eyes. “It’s just what, Tor?”
He looked into her dark eyes and wondered if he could dare to speak his truth. Even after years of serving with Ilucci, Threx, and Cahow, he had never felt comfortable baring his inner life to them. They had been through more life-or-death crises than he’d ever thought he would face in one lifetime, yet he remained afraid of what they might say if they knew what really kept him awake at night. As much as he had longed to reveal his deepest feelings to the ship’s former pilot, the beautiful Andorian zhen Celerasayna zh’Firro, she had died during the Battle of Vanguard without ever knowing how keenly he had pined for her.
After all that, could he really risk revealing his feelings now to Taryl, an avowed misanthrope whose beauty had nonetheless beguiled him?
His inner voice broke through his mental din of doubt and fear. You might be dead in sixteen minutes. If you can’t be true to yourself now, then when?
He took a breath and swallowed hard. “It’s just that . . . I’ve never been in love.”
She stared as if in shock, then she laughed. He took it for a cruel, derisive snort—but before he could retreat, her surprise softened into a compassionate smile. “So? Neither have I.”
It was impossible to believe. “You? You haven’t? But . . . you’re so beautiful.”
His compliment made her eyes shimmer with tears. “I come from an ugly place. Where I grew up, no one believes in love. Passion? Pleasure? Sure, for a price. But love? Never.”
She looked different all of a sudden. Stripped of her emotional armor, she looked almost wounded. In that moment, she seemed more vulnerable than she ever had before.
To Torvin, she looked even more gorgeous than she had moments earlier. She was no longer just an ideal he adored from afar; she had become real.
He knew he could trust her.
“I know I’m going to die someday. Maybe today. But I think I’d find it easier to face the end if I had one moment of genuine affection to look back on. One moment of real connection with another soul to make me think this life was worth it, even if it got cut short.”
She palmed her own tears from h
er eyes. “You mean like a first kiss?”
“Exactly.” He looked up at Taryl, who stood several centimeters taller than he did. “But I guess the odds against a moment like that at a time like this are a billion to one.”
Taryl seized the front of Torvin’s jumpsuit, pulled him toward her, and kissed him.
It was no fleeting peck, no friendly snog on the cheek. It was a real kiss, one full of passion and lust for life, the sort of lip lock that would drive a poet to write an epic ballad or make a bishop kick in a stained-glass window, the kind of kiss that could raise the dead.
Her emerald lips parted from his, and he was left breathless in her embrace.
Then she gave him a small shove that rocked him backward on his heels. When he recovered his balance and found his feet, she flashed a smile he would remember forever.
“Must be your lucky day, Crewman. Now get back in there. We have a world to save.”
• • •
Out of the corner of Terrell’s eye, he saw Taryl lead Torvin back into the control center, like a border collie rounding up a stray sheep. As the mismatched duo walked back toward the rest of the group, the round-robin discussion caromed between panic and despair.
Ilucci paced in a small circle while massaging his temples with the thumb and middle finger of his right hand. “It feels like we’ve tried everything at this point.”
“If we had tried everything, we’d have found a solution,” Kavalas said. His petulant reply drew angry stares from most of the Sagittarius’s crew and glum looks from the astronauts.
Theriault stepped forward, with her hands raised and palms out, and tried to impose some diplomacy on the proceedings. “Let’s think this through. What have we ruled out?”
“Tractor beams can’t lift the generator off the surface,” Sorak said, “because we are unable to maintain an accurate lock when subject to the distortion field.”
Masking his melancholy with gruffness, Dastin added, “We can’t destroy the dark energy siphon with phasers or torpedoes without cooking off the planet’s atmosphere.”
Cahow dragged her finger through a layer of soot that had collected on top of a workstation’s console monitor. “We can’t overload the siphon without blowing out the complex.”
“We can’t force the master console back into phase,” Ilucci said. He kicked a loose piece of scrap tech across the floor. “And we’ve proved there aren’t enough working spare parts here to build a new one.”
Chief Razka watched the piece of circuit board kicked by Ilucci tumble past his feet. “Could we fabricate the missing components on the ship?”
A dismissive shrug from Ilucci. “Sure, if we had an extra six hours.”
The parade of bad news left the astronaut commander beaten down. “Are you telling me this facility doesn’t have a backup command center?”
Kavalas seemed to take the question as a personal slight. “Are you really that surprised? Tell me, Commander Beiana: How many replacements did Station Xenopus have for its core command module? If it had been struck by debris or—”
“It was struck by debris,” Beiana cut in. “And an asteroid storm. Both summoned by this high-tech monstrosity you switched on without a backup command-and-control system.”
“Who are you to question my—”
“Enough!” Terrell bellowed. “We don’t have time to waste on blame!” He stepped between Beiana and Kavalas, then pivoted to direct the rest of his remarks to everyone. “We need to work together and find a solution to this problem or we’re all going to die. If you all want to point fingers and lob insults after we’re done, that’s fine by me. But I’d rather not die today if there’s anything we can do about it. So focus, people!”
The room fell silent for a few seconds.
A small voice piped up. It was Hesh. “I might have a solution, sir.”
“Lieutenant, if you’re gaslighting me—”
“I am not familiar with that term, sir, but if I might react to your tone, I assure you that I am quite serious. This facility does not have a functional auxiliary control center, but that does not mean it was designed without one. As Doctor Kavalas told us earlier, a backup control center was planned and started, but never finished. It was abandoned, just like the tiers of workstations in this room.” He pointed at Kavalas. “Does that partial auxiliary control center have links to the facility’s data systems?”
“Yes, but there’s no power to that section of—”
“Irrelevant, Doctor. The power will come from the ship. As will the control.”
That claim perked up Terrell’s ears, as well as those of the rest of the crew present. Eyebrows raised to their apex, Terrell asked Hesh, “Come again, Lieutenant?”
Hesh held up his tricorder. “Thanks to Doctor Kavalas, I have the complete schematics and the operating code for the master control console, both its software and its firmware. Though this tricorder lacks the requisite processor power to simulate the master control console and generate sufficient power to control the facility’s attendant systems, the ship’s main computer core does. If I simulate the master console in a holographic matrix generated by the ship’s faster-than-light core, even with only partial impulse power, we will possess more than enough energy and processor speed to take control of this facility with a virtual terminal.”
Theriault recoiled from the idea. “Whoa! Tell me this won’t risk shifting the ship out of phase like that master console!”
“It won’t.” Hesh pointed at his tricorder. “We have already debugged the operating code for this system. Furthermore, the phase-shift was dependent upon a deliberate design flaw in the Austarans’ original console—a flaw that does not exist in our ship’s command systems.”
Looking unconvinced, Kavalas stepped into the middle of the gathering, his hands waving dismissively. “You’re overlooking something, Mister Hesh. We can’t patch into the backup control center from here. We would need a new hard-line connection to its systems.”
The scientist’s protest provoked a confused scowl from Ilucci. “So? Why not patch in from the data node down the corridor?”
“You mean the one you burned to a crisp with your ill-considered overload attempt?”
If the Master Chief had a witty retort, it withered on the vine. He lowered his hand, shut his mouth, and let the accusation go unchallenged.
Terrell had bigger concerns than his chief engineer’s pride. He turned toward Kavalas. “If that’s been destroyed, what’s the next closest access point that lets us control the system?”
“We’ll need to run a hard line all the way down to the backup control center on the accelerator sublevel, three hundred meters to the right from the bottom of the access stairs.”
Ilucci looked up, his countenance hopeful. “I saw at least that much data cable in the maintenance depot. Tor, you can rig an adaptor to let our computer talk to their network. Karen, I need you to supervise the patch into the ship’s computer. Hesh, get back to the ship and whip up that virtual command panel, on the double. Captain, if you and the rest of the team could make sure the lines don’t get severed or tangled between here and there, I’ll run the rest of the cable down to the backup control center and handle the patch-in.”
This was a plan Terrell could get behind. “Sounds good, Master Chief. Get on it. Everyone else, you have your orders! Move out!” His crew dashed into action.
Kavalas grabbed his arm. “Captain! This is madness! Your engineer Ilucci could be killed if he’s still on the accelerator sublevel when the system crashes!”
“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, Doctor.” He pulled his arm free. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, we have ten minutes to save your planet.”
22
Stupid short legs. Hesh cursed his anatomy—not for the first time—as he lagged behind Lieutenant Commander Sorak, who sprinted onto the bridge of the Sag
ittarius several seconds ahead of him. Even though the Vulcan man was many decades older than Hesh, he had outpaced him handily, thanks to his species’ naturally superior strength and stamina.
Hesh arrived in time to hear Ensign Nizsk plead from the command chair, “What is happening, sir?” The insectoid navigator-pilot looked uncomfortable in the center seat, which had been tailored to the physiques of humanoids—an unintentionally discriminatory aspect of its design that Hesh resolved to mention in one of his future memoranda to Starfleet Command.
“Mister Hesh is going to configure a virtual command console for the malfunctioning alien dark energy facility using our ship’s computer.” Sorak moved to his usual station, the aft console beside the entrance. “Shut down all unnecessary systems and route all available power to the main computer, at once.”
Nizsk hurried to her normal post. “Sir, does that include life support?”
“Affirmative, Ensign,” Hesh replied as he crossed the bridge. “We are on the planet’s surface, so we can draw air and moisture from the atmosphere. Shut down all systems except communications and the main computer.”
“And antimatter containment,” Sorak added.
“Understood, sirs.” Nizsk settled back in at the forward console and set herself to work, while Hesh pondered why a Starfleet vessel would even permit its crew to shut off magnetic containment of its antimatter fuel supply, short of a self-destruct order.
Leaving that mystery unresolved, Hesh settled in at the sensor console, a post he knew well, and set himself to work reconfiguring it into a virtual control console for the Austarans’ dark energy nightmare. “I am uploading the schematics and software for the master console from my tricorder now,” he announced, more for Sorak’s benefit than for Nizsk’s. “It will take a few moments to reconfigure the interface into Starfleet-standard alphanumeric data sets and command groupings.”
Sorak’s hands flew across his console and the next one adjacent, making adjustments so swiftly and subtly that Hesh had no idea what they might be. “All nonessential systems confirm shutdown. Impulse core is at twenty-nine percent capacity. All battery reserves available.”
