by Dave Stern
The captain and she stood with Reed and Roan in launch bay two. Behind the four of them, two crewmen from engineering were preparing Shuttlepod One for launch.
“I understand that part,” Roan said. “Perhaps I’m not making myself clear. The outpost is not that large. Even if their sensors don’t detect us, there is a good chance they will simply see the shuttlepod landing.”
“We are taking all possible steps to minimize that occurrence,” T’Pol said. She handed Reed her padd. “You’ll see the course I’ve plotted for you, Lieutenant.”
Reed studied the small screen. T’Pol’s course called for the pod to come in on the far side of the planetoid and skim the surface at what would have been treetop level on Earth, finally using the pyramid as cover to land at the outpost.
“You should have enough time to return Commodore Roan to the planet—and to retrieve the necessary records.”
“It’s risky—there’s no denying it,” the captain said. “But we’ve got a little bit of a distraction planned as well.”
“Sir?”
“We’re going to make a show of trying to break through their jamming beam. Nothing extreme, mind you,” he said, off Reed’s look of concern, “just enough of a sustained effort that the ambassador notices.”
Levy, one of the crewmen preparing the pod, stepped forward. “Excuse me, sirs. We’re all set.”
“Thank you, Crewman,” the captain said. “Well, Malcolm, Commodore—you’d better get aboard.”
T’Pol checked her tricorder. “Indeed. Perihelion in seven minutes.”
Roan turned to Archer. “I want you to know again how much I appreciate what you have done for me, Captain. And my people.”
“Our pleasure. The next time our two races meet, Commodore, I want it to be as friends.” Archer handed Roan a small sample container. “And here is a token of our friendship.”
Roan opened the container. “The phondrikaar.”
“It’s yours…as promised.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
The two men shook hands.
“I appreciate your efforts as well, Sub-Commander,” Roan said, turning to T’Pol.
“I wish you luck, Commodore,” T’Pol said. “Live long and prosper.”
“I plan on doing both—thanks to you, and your doctor. Please don’t forget to convey my regards to him as well.”
“Of course.”
“One last thing, Lieutenant,” T’Pol said. “There is a downside to the interference we are counting on to mask your descent. It will also—more than likely—prevent you from communicating with us once perihelion occurs.”
Reed shrugged. “I don’t see where we’ll have much to talk about, sirs. Fly down, drop off the commodore, pick up the records, and fly back. That’s all there is, isn’t it?”
“That’s all.” The captain took a step closer to Reed. “Malcolm, I’ve already lost one crewman on this mission. I do not want to lose a second.”
“No, sir.”
“No matter what happens down there—if you find the records or not—you make that launch window. Get out while the interference is still strong enough to mask your takeoff. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Reed said.
“Good man.” Archer clapped him on the shoulder. “We’ll see you shortly.”
“Aye, sir. Commodore—shall we?”
He gestured toward the open shuttlepod door. With a final nod to Archer and T’Pol, Roan entered the small craft.
Reed took a last look around the launch bay himself. The mission was as simple as he’d outlined it. In two hours—approximately—he’d be back aboard Enterprise, safe and sound.
Approximately, he realized.
There was that word again.
Reed sat in the pilot’s chair. He gave the commodore control of weapons, on the off chance that they’d need them. On that off chance, he even started explaining how the various systems aboard the pod functioned.
But once they’d dropped out of orbit to the planetoid’s surface, he had to stop talking and concentrate on piloting the ship. Because there was another complicating factor to the mission T’Pol had forgotten to mention.
The interference not only made it impossible for them to communicate with Enterprise, but also rendered their sensors virtually useless.
Which would not normally have been a problem, given that the planetoid was airless and visibility was excellent. He’d done dozens of similar landings, without instruments, relying solely on the naked eye to make his approach and bring his ship down.
Only in this case, he didn’t have to just bring his ship down; he had to guide it halfway around the planetoid at a height of one hundred meters. And the problem with that, he quickly realized, was that the asteroid was rocky, and there were lots of other things that occupied that same one-hundred-meter height he was flying at. Reed didn’t know whether to call them crags, or outcrops, or hills, or mountains, or what-have-yous—and it didn’t really matter. He had to dodge them all without going too high above the hundred-meter ceiling—it was like an old-fashioned roller-coaster ride.
Finally it ended, though, and the pod touched down in the shadow of the pyramid.
Minutes later, they accessed the tunnel complex, and emerged into one of the modules Roan had been using as part of his temporary base camp. They were, Reed realized, exactly the same kind of modules he and Trip and Bishop had noticed on the planet’s surface—larger on the inside than Reed would have expected for such simple structures.
The interior of the one Roan had guided him to was a ruin.
“They have been here. Valay, and her forces.” He strode quickly to a cabinet on the far side of the room and threw it open.
The inside was a charred mass of plastic and metal. Reed could smell it from where he stood.
“This is where we found the outpost’s records—what the scientists had discovered down here.” He shook his head. “Why would she do this?”
“So what we’re looking for…”
“Is gone. Everything is gone. It makes no sense.” Roan looked around the module’s interior, and his eyes lit on what looked to Reed like a computer terminal. He crossed quickly to it, and flipped a series of switches.
“Dead as well. The raw data was in here—I thought we could give that to you, at least, even if…” He sighed. “I am sorry, Lieutenant. I will have to send you back empty-handed.”
Reed stood there, and all he could think of was Alana. What would happen to her memory if he left the outpost now, and returned to Enterprise.
He couldn’t do it.
“I can’t go back yet, sir. I need to find out what happened to her. To my friend.”
“And I wish I could help you do that. But the records simply aren’t here.”
“Commodore, you don’t understand. Starfleet is going to convene a hearing on her behavior, and no matter what I believe, or what the captain believes, she’s going to be found guilty—of insanity at the very least. Possibly court-martialed, her name tarnished…” He shook his head. “We have to go back in to the pyramid, and see if we can find out what happened there.”
“To the pyramid? Lieutenant…” Roan shook his head. “You heard what your captain said. I heard what your captain said. If the records weren’t here, you’re to get back to the ship.”
“No, that’s not what he said. He said I had to make that launch window, and according to T’Pol’s estimates,” Reed glanced at his tricorder, “I still have an hour and twenty minutes to do that. Plenty of time to reach the pyramid and take readings.”
“I promise you, Lieutenant. I will take readings for you—later. Once the situation with Valay is resolved. It is simply too dangerous for you to stay down here a minute more.”
“I’m not asking for your permission,” Reed said. “Or your help. I know where the central chamber is. I know how to get to the pyramid from it. You do what you need to.”
They’d come up into the module by climbing a ladder. Now he
put his foot on the topmost rung, and started to climb back down, realizing as he went that without the environmental suit, he’d be able to move much faster than previously. He should have time enough not only to retrace his steps to the place he’d found Alana, but possibly even explore the interior further.
“Wait.”
Reed looked up the ladder, and saw Roan’s face peering over the edge.
“You’re being foolhardy, you know.”
Reed sighed. He didn’t have time to even begin an explanation of his actions to Roan. More than ever, he was certain that the answers he was looking for lay back in the pyramid, back where he’d found Alana. Roan’s answers were there too, he felt. Why Valay had acted as she had, done the things she’d done…
“Completely out of character,” the commodore had called her behavior, Reed recalled.
And suddenly Reed realized he and Roan were both dealing with the same question—what could cause someone to change so completely? Because Valay was different now from the first time he’d seen her, in just as dramatic a way as Alana had been different after she’d returned from the planet.
Reed paused on the ladder a moment, remembering.
Twenty
BRIDGE
1/14/2151 0900 HOURS
“IT’S NOT THE COMMODORE.” Hoshi listened to the com traffic on her earpiece and frowned. “Different source altogether.”
Archer swiveled in his chair to face Hoshi. “But it is the Sarkassians?”
“Yes,” she said.
“The signal is coming over subspace frequencies from a point outside the Eris Alpha system.” T’Pol looked up from her viewer. “They are using a series of satellite relays to disguise the transmission’s origin.”
“They don’t want us to know where they’re from,” Archer said.
“Hardly surprising,” Reed added. “Wouldn’t expect them to put out the welcome mat after how they’ve acted so far.”
“Let’s see what they want.” Archer nodded to Hoshi. “Put it up onscreen.”
The viewer filled with the image of a Sarkassian female. Her skin was the same pale white as Roan’s, her hair long and streaked with crimson, held back from her face by a simple purple band. She wore a long robe of the same color, and stood in the middle of an ornate chamber made of what looked like floor-to-ceiling panes of colored glass.
“Earth vessel Enterprise, this is Ambassador Valay Shuma aboard the Striker Amileus. Your presence in our space is an act of aggression.”
“So we’ve been told, Ambassador,” the captain said.
“You are Archer?”
“Yes, and as I’ve tried to explain, we were responding to a distress call—”
“Archer, we are en route to your position now, estimated arrival time approximately nine hours,” the ambassador interrupted. “We will hear your explanation at that time.”
“That’s Captain Archer, if you don’t mind, Ambassador. And we were made aware of your coming and your arrival time earlier. Is there another purpose to this communication?”
“Yes. We have tentatively identified the man you currently hold aboard your ship.”
The screen suddenly filled with the image of the alien they’d brought back from the outpost, lying in his bed in sickbay. For a second Reed wondered how the Sarkassians had obtained it—then remembered the image Phlox had provided to Roan.
“According to our records, he is Mercantor Gol, a crewman on the Relayer Haven—a shuttle recently sent to resupply the outpost. You may be aware that it was the Haven’s crash into the outpost that resulted in the death of our scientists.”
“We knew something had destroyed your atmospheric containment field. We didn’t know what.”
“It was the Haven,” Valay said. “We have just finished reconstructing the incident. There was an explosion aboard the craft just prior to landing. The pilot lost control.”
“Sounds like your crewman here was lucky to survive.”
“He is not our crewman,” Valay said. “And we believe his survival had nothing to do with luck.”
Reed and the captain exchanged a puzzled look.
“I’m sorry,” Archer said. “You’ve lost me.”
“Mercantor Gol did not exist until six months ago. This so-called survivor you rescued is an impostor.”
The image from sickbay vanished, and was replaced by another. A man standing in front of a very familiar-looking building, a virtual twin of the one Reed and Trip had explored while at the outpost. He was dressed in some sort of uniform. Arms folded across his chest, he stood in front of the building as if determined to defend it to the death.
“We believe he is actually this man—Kostal Goridian. We further believe he deliberately caused the explosion aboard the shuttle, in order to destroy our facility.”
Reed studied the image carefully. There was a slight facial resemblance between this Goridian and the man they had in sickbay, but Goridian seemed far closer to human than Sarkassian—his build was stockier, his skin color darker…even the proportions of his limbs seemed different.
But it could be the same man. And if it was…
Being found next to Alana could hardly be a coincidence. He must have had something to do with what happened to her.
Valay reappeared on the viewer.
“The purpose of our call is to urge you to take extreme caution when dealing with Goridian. He is capable of anything.”
“Why would he do this?” Archer asked.
“He is Ta’alaat. We are at war with his people.”
“But the man in our sickbay is—or appears to be—Sarkassian.”
“Appears is the correct word, Captain. There are ways of altering one’s appearance. Goridian is master of all of them—and a very dangerous man. Please prepare him for immediate transport to Commodore Roan’s ship.”
Archer was silent a moment.
“Ambassador, we had a crewperson injured down on the planetoid’s surface. If this Goridian is who you say he is, I will want to question him about that.”
“We will be happy to share what relevant information we glean from him with you,” Valay said.
Archer nodded thoughtfully. Reed would have bet money the captain’s thoughts mirrored his own—based on the way the Sarkassians had acted so far, once Enterprise transferred Goridian to Roan’s vessel, they would never see him again.
“Very well,” Archer said. “Of course, any talk of transferring the prisoner now is premature. He is still unconscious, after all. And I’m sure our doctor would not want us to move him in this condition.”
“I see.” Valay’s eyes were like pinpricks. “Very well, Captain. Until our arrival, you may maintain custody of the prisoner. As I said, however, he is extremely dangerous. Do you have confinement facilities aboard your ship?”
Archer turned to Reed.
“We can make do, sir,” Reed said. In fact, Enterprise had a brig, but he was in the middle of reconfiguring it entirely, to try and incorporate what they’d learned about forcefield technology over the last year into its design. It would be simple enough to construct something temporary, though, that one prisoner would have no chance of escaping.
“We’ll be able to put the prisoner into a secure environment,” Archer told Valay.
“Very well,” she said. “Until tomorrow.”
The screen went dark.
“I must warn you again, Captain, of the dangers involved in interfering in a conflict between these two races,” T’Pol said. “We cannot be seen to be taking sides. Keeping this prisoner away from the Sarkassians is a dangerous act.”
“I want to know what happened to Ensign Hart,” Archer said. “Beyond that, who has the prisoner and what happens to him doesn’t concern me.” Archer turned to Reed. “You’ll get to work on that brig, Malcolm?”
“Aye, sir.”
“Another transmission coming through from the ambassador’s ship, sir,” Hoshi said.
Archer nodded. “Put it up.”
“I
t’s not audio, sir. It’s a data burst.”
“Decoding now,” T’Pol said. “It appears to be a biographical dossier on this Goridian.”
“Send a copy down to sickbay, Sub-Commander,” Archer said. “Let the doctor have a look at it.”
“Aye, sir.”
Reed punched in a series of instructions to the computer to send a copy of the file to his system as well. When the prisoner woke, Reed wanted to be prepared with some questions of his own.
He ordered Bishop to the bridge, and then got to work.
They set up the brig in an unfinished cabin on C-deck. It took several hours—Reed spent most of that time there, supervising and, increasingly, pitching in. The work was physical, and by the time it was finished, he was sweating, and he was hungry, and most of all, he was tired.
But eating and showering could wait. He wanted to see Alana.
He made his way to sickbay, on a sudden impulse stopping in her quarters first. He found Phlox in his lab, bent over a microscope.
“Doctor?”
Phlox looked up, and Reed saw that the doctor was several shades paler than usual.
“What’s the matter?”
“A most unsettling experience,” Phlox said. “This alien—the one you brought back from the outpost? I’ve just discovered he brought a nasty virus on board with him. I was just examining it—an incredibly hardy little beast. Tough to kill—and very deadly. Lethal across almost all species lines, as far as I can tell.”
Reed froze in his tracks.
“Good lord.” His mind raced through the biowarfare protocol—quarantine, decontamination, neutralization. “I’ll contact the captain—let him know we should close down the areas of the ship the alien was in, initiate—”
“There’s no need for that, Lieutenant,” Phlox said. “I did not mean to worry you unnecessarily. I have already destroyed the virus—all except this one sample, which, since I have now committed its basic structure to our data banks,” Phlox pressed a button next to the microscope, and a brief flash of ultraviolet light flared, “can be safely destroyed as well.”
“The alien brought that on board with him?”
