by Dayton Ward
“Position report!” he called out, pulling himself from his captain’s chair and moving to stand behind Lieutenant T’Vrel at the helm. “Did we make it through the rift?”
The Vulcan nodded. “Affirmative, sir. We appear to have cleared the inner boundary and are now on a course toward the planetoid.”
Arens directed his attention to the main viewscreen, which displayed the image of the small, seemingly orphaned Gralafi. Even from this distance, the captain was able to note the amalgam of grays and browns denoting the planetoid’s surface, with only slight splashes of greens indicating sparse vegetation in various, isolated regions. Considering there were no other destinations that seemed to present themselves, he ordered, “Take us to a standard orbit, T’Vrel. Let’s park while we figure out what’s what.”
“Acknowledged,” the helm officer replied, her fingers playing across her console as she entered the necessary commands.
So, what exactly is what? The thought rattled around in Arens’s mind as he contemplated the past few minutes. Everything had seemed fine as T’Vrel maneuvered the Huang Zhong into the rift on a course toward Gralafi. The first indications that something might be wrong had come within seconds of entering the energy field, as Boma picked up distortions from inside the rift even as the ship made the transit through the barrier. The alarms from engineering seemed to start mere heartbeats after that, with the chief engineer, Master Chief Petty Officer Christine Rideout, contacting the bridge and advising Arens of fluctuations in the warp engines. Things had only proceeded to go downhill from there.
Looking about the bridge and seeing that the rest of his officers had already returned their attention to their respective stations and duties, Arens asked, “Commander Hebert, how are we? Is everybody okay?”
“We’re good to go in that department, sir,” April Hebert replied from where she stood at one of the workstations along the bridge’s starboard bulkhead. “Everyone accounted for, and no injuries to speak of.”
Arens nodded at the report. “Small favors, but I’ll take them. Turning his attention to Rzaelir Zihl du Molidin, who had taken a seat at the unmanned console next to Hebert, he asked, “Advisor, are you all right?”
Zihl said, “Yes, Captain. Thank you. I am happy to hear your crew suffered no injuries.”
“Just our lucky day, I guess,” Arens said before looking again to Hebert. “Did you manage to get off the distress signal?”
“For the most part,” the first officer answered. “There was some disruption as we passed through the rift, and the last part of the transmission was cut off, but most of it got through, along with the sensor packet. The Enterprise was already on its way here, so they’ll likely still be the first ship to respond. They were four days away at last report. Assuming they accelerate to maximum warp, that’ll put them here in just shy of twenty-five hours.”
“If I know Jim Kirk,” Arens countered, “he’ll milk every last bit of speed from his ship’s engines to get here as fast as he can. Until then, though, we’re on our own.”
T’Vrel called out from the helm station, “We have assumed a standard orbit above the planetoid, Captain.”
Nodding at the report, Arens said, “Thanks, Lieutenant. All right, now that things have settled down for the moment, I’d like to know how we got to this point. Advisor Zihl, have your people ever encountered anything like what happened to us when we passed through the rift?”
Zihl rose from her seat, and the captain saw her expression contort into something approximating a frown. “No, Captain. At least, not so far as is publicly known. I have been through the Pass many times myself, and I have never experienced or witnessed anything like that.”
“Okay,” Arens said, not liking that answer but seeing little to be accomplished from beating the topic to death when other, more pressing matters demanded his attention. “We’ll put a pin in that for now, but I’d like you to ask your government leaders about it when we get a chance.” Turning toward the center of the bridge, he added, “Mister Boma, did our sensors pick up anything?”
Sitting at his workstation, the science officer replied, “Judging by these readings we collected, I’d have to say that the rift reacted in some manner to our warp engines. If Rideout hadn’t ejected the antimatter containment bottles when she did . . . well, I’d rather not dwell on that, if you don’t mind.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Hebert asked, making no effort to hide her surprise. “Even with all the backup and safety systems?”
Boma leaned back in his chair. “When the disruption hit the engines, everything was out of whack for a period of about ten seconds. Backups were trying to kick in, but they were lagging, and that was with a fluctuation in the magnetic fields surrounding the containment bottles. Any delay in a system kicking in could be critical, even fatal. Rideout did the right thing by punting the antimatter.”
As if on cue, the ship’s intercom buzzed to life, followed by the voice of the Huang Zhong’s chief engineer, Christine Rideout. “Engineering to bridge. Everybody okay up there?”
Moving to his command chair, Arens tapped the control on the chair’s right arm to open the intercom channel. “Everybody’s fine, Chief. What’s the story with the engines?”
“It’s a sad, sad tale of woe, sir,” the engineer replied, “and the ending stinks. Whatever we ran into, it torqued the warp drive pretty good. Even if I hadn’t ejected the antimatter, I’d still have half a dozen burnouts in the warp coils. Hell, one of the things damn near melted, if you can believe that.”
Though Arens already had a decent enough idea regarding the answer to his next question, he asked it anyway. “Give me the short version, Chief. How much time to make repairs?”
“Out here, by ourselves?” Rideout asked. “About a century, give or take a week or two. Even if we had replacement antimatter and a containment system to go with it, we’d still need a tow to a proper maintenance facility, sir. Other than the warp drive, we can probably take care of everything else in a couple of days or so. Less, if we get some help.”
Behind him, Zihl said, “Though I do not know what we might do to help, we are certainly willing to offer any possible assistance, Captain.”
“I appreciate that, Advisor,” Arens replied, knowing there was little if anything the Dolysians could do to help with his ship’s present situation. Still, there was no mistaking in Zihl’s words and eyes the genuine desire to render whatever aid might be feasible. “I truly do.” Returning his attention to the intercom panel and imagining the beleaguered expression on the face of his engineer, he said, “All right, Chief. Thanks for the update. Is there anything we can do to make your life easier?”
“You could send me to Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet for a month,” the engineer replied. “We’re going to need to access some systems and components from the outside, sir. If you could set us down, that’d be a huge help.”
“Consider it done,” Arens replied, happy not for the first time that the Huang Zhong’s design allowed the vessel to make planetfall, rather than being forced to remain in orbit. “Keep me posted, and I’ll see about getting you some more help.”
Through the speaker, Rideout said, “Much obliged, Skipper. I’ll have plenty for folks to do. Rideout . . . riding out.”
Despite the current situation, Arens could not help but smile at the chief’s signature sign-off as the communication ended. With a quick wit and a sense of humor sharp enough to cut diamonds, Christine Rideout often shouldered the burden not only of keeping the Huang Zhong in top running order, but also of seeing to the morale of the ship’s crew. As fast as her mind might be when coming up with a clever riposte whenever someone made the ill-fated decision to challenge her in a verbal sparring match, the chief’s fingers also seemed to move at warp speed and as though possessed of their own will. Whatever repair obstacles she faced, Rideout would make short work of them, at least so long as she had access to the proper resources. Even with the damage to the ship, which was beyond her imme
diate means to address, Arens knew that under the chief engineer’s watchful eye, they still were in decent shape.
“You just know she’s back there, cursing loud and hard enough to strip paint off the bulkheads,” Hebert said, offering a knowing grin as she moved from her station.
The captain nodded, chuckling at the image her statement evoked. “Oh, I know. Having to ask for a tow back to base is the engineer’s equivalent of a captain being forced to evacuate and abandon his ship, at least so far as damage to the ego is concerned.” He paused, looking around the bridge and taking stock of the situation by glancing at the array of workstation monitors and status indicators within his field of vision. “Advisor Zihl, may I have your permission to land on Gralafi in order to start our repairs?”
The Dolysian replied, “Of course, Captain. Our central colony settlement, Havreltipa, features several landing ports and a vessel maintenance facility.”
At the helm console, T’Vrel said, “I have it on sensors, Captain. The facility has two unoccupied berths.”
“Excellent,” Arens said, liking the way the situation was beginning to show signs of improvement. “T’Vrel, make preparations for landing. Advisor Zihl, if you’ll work with Commander Hebert, we’ll put you in contact with the mining colony in order to secure their authorization.” Looking to his first officer, he added, “Commander, set up a shift rotation and let’s have all available hands sent down to engineering to give Rideout some help. We’re not going to be able to do much else until the cavalry gets here.” Given the size of Archer-class scouts and the small crews serving aboard them, assignment to such a vessel required that each crew member be cross-trained and proficient in at least two other starship occupational specialties. Such was the case aboard the Huang Zhong, with everyone including the captain possessing some form of engineering skill set that could be utilized during situations just like the one Arens and his crew faced.
Hebert replied, “Aye, aye, sir. We’re on it.”
From where he still worked at his science station, Boma said, “Captain, you need to see this.”
Uh-oh, Arens thought. Now what? Stepping around his chair, he moved to stand behind Boma so that he could look down at the console over the other man’s shoulder. “What’s up?”
“Something odd on the sensors,” the science officer replied, frowning. “Now that we’re on this side of the rift, I’m able to get a better look at the energy field. Though I suspected something like this from the beginning, this is the first real indication that I might be right.”
“Right about what?” Arens asked.
Boma gestured to one of his console’s display monitors. “The rift. I’m sure it’s being generated artificially, Captain.”
“Really?” Arens asked, his eyes widening in surprise. “How?”
Shaking his head, Boma replied, “I don’t know yet. It was almost an accident that I found it at all.” He pointed again to his station. “Coming through the rift disrupted our sensors, and I had to reset and recalibrate the array. I was going through some diagnostics, checking different wavelengths and frequencies, and the scanners picked up an abnormality. When I took a closer look, I was able to detect a regular pattern within the energy field surrounding the rift. It was reacting to our passage, even without the disruption caused by our warp engines. The entire field was acting like some kind of passive sensor scan. It covered the entire ship in seconds. I have no idea what controlled it, or if any information was transmitted to or from it, but the pattern was unmistakable, Captain. Whatever that thing is, it’s not a naturally occurring phenomenon. Someone or something put it there, deliberately.”
“You’re sure?” Arens asked.
“Absolutely.” Reaching for his console, Boma tapped several of the multicolored buttons in sequence, in response to which one of the monitors began to display a pattern of lights, fluctuating in what Arens quickly surmised was a steady, measured rhythm. “The sensors picked up the repeating pattern,” the science officer explained, “though it’s much slower than what I’m showing here. I amplified the tempo so you wouldn’t have to look at it for an hour.”
Arens smiled. “Thanks for that. Okay, so the big question now is who or what is responsible, and where are they?” Even as he asked the question, he found himself looking up from the science station to regard the image of the planetoid, the upper third of which was now visible on the main viewscreen. “Anybody care to take a guess?”
“Gralafi makes the most sense,” Boma said, “though I haven’t yet picked up indications of any sort of broadcast or projection coming from it. We’re conducting sweeps of the planet surface, but so far I’m not finding anything that can’t be explained by the Dolysians’ presence.”
Turning at the sound of approaching footsteps, Arens saw Zihl moving toward him, her expression one of confusion. “Commander Boma, are you suggesting that someone other than my people may be living on Gralafi?”
Boma paused, glancing to Arens, who nodded for him to continue. “At this point, Advisor, I’m not prepared to make that determination, though it’s certainly a possibility. So far, our sensor data remains inconclusive.”
“You mentioned that you only caught the initial pattern when you were retuning the sensors,” Hebert said as she crossed the bridge to stand opposite Arens on the other side of Boma’s station. “Maybe whatever you’re looking for is operating on another frequency altogether; something we can’t easily pick up, either.”
“Already on that, Commander,” the science officer replied. “I’m running a program that will cycle through the sensor array with special emphasis on wavelengths we don’t normally use.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I swear it’s like whatever we’re looking for knows we’re looking for it, or at least was designed to evade searches like this.” No sooner did he speak the words than an alert tone sounded from his station, and Boma emitted what to Arens’s ears sounded like a grunt of satisfaction. “Bingo.” He tapped another string of commands to his console, and several monitors shifted their readouts to display what the captain recognized as sensor wavelength patterns.
“What are we looking at?” Arens asked.
“Power readings,” Boma answered, “coming from somewhere on the planet.”
His eyes now riveted to the planetoid on the screen, Arens pondered the mysterious potential it now harbored, if his science officer’s report was any indication. “Can you locate its source?”
“Working on it,” Boma said. “Hang on, I think—”
The rest of his report was drowned out as a new alarm klaxon began wailing across the bridge mere heartbeats before Arens felt the deck shift beneath his feet. He reached out to grip the back of Boma’s chair, just managing to keep himself from being thrown off balance as the entire ship seemed to quaver around him.
“What the hell was that?” Hebert shouted over the siren and the groans of protest that seemed to be emanating from every bulkhead and deck plate. Like Arens, she had grabbed for anything that might keep her from being tossed to the deck, and now held on to one of the rails separating the bridge’s command well from the perimeter workstations. A quick glance around the room told the captain that everyone else seemed to have avoided taking any nasty spills.
Holding on to her helm console, T’Vrel replied, “Something hit us, sir. Attempting to ascertain damage.”
“Shields!” Arens barked.
T’Vrel shook her head. “Nonresponsive, Captain.”
“It wasn’t something that hit us,” Boma called out. “It’s latched on to us. Some kind of tractor beam!”
Tractor beam? What in the name of . . . ?
The thoughts tumbled about within Arens’s mind as the ship lurched again, and this time the attack—if it was an attack—was accompanied by the voice of the Huang Zhong’s chief engineer exploding from the intercom.
“Rideout to bridge! What the hell’s going on up there?”
Pushing himself away from the science station, Arens dropped into his sea
t and hit the intercom switch on the command chair’s right arm. “Something’s gotten hold of us, Chief! Where are the shields?”
“The shield generators are being disrupted by the beam,” Boma said, cutting off the engineer. “Unless we can break free, they’re useless.”
Through the intercom, Rideout replied, “I’ve tried everything to override, but it’s not happening!”
Before Arens could respond, everything around him shuddered once again, and a new alarm tone blared for attention. “Now what?”
“The beam’s strength is increasing,” Boma replied, his tone one of shocked disbelief. “We’re being pulled out of orbit!”
“Reverse course!” Arens shouted. “Full impulse power!” For the first time, it occurred to him to look toward the main viewscreen, where he now saw the image of Gralafi beginning to move as the Huang Zhong shifted on its axis from its orbital course and began to head toward the planetoid itself. “Engineering, I need everything you’ve got transferred to propulsion! Now!”
Rideout’s voice erupted from the intercom, “I’m rerouting everything I can get my hands on, Skipper!”
“It won’t be enough,” Hebert yelled from where she had retaken her station. “Not without warp drive!”
Slamming his fist down on the arm of his chair, Arens hit the switch to silence the alarms. The action did nothing to soften the growing whine of the ship’s engines as T’Vrel fought to break free of whatever had ensnared the Huang Zhong.
