by Dayton Ward
“Put it through, and activate the translation matrix,” Vathrael ordered. A moment later the bridge’s intercom system blared to life, with a male voice calling out from within a hiss of crackling static.
“Romulan vessel, this is Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. Your ship is being targeted by a planetary defense system keyed to react to perceived threats. It can detect your engines, your deflector shields, and your weapons. The system is programmed to preemptively neutralize such threats. Your ship is in danger!”
Sirad frowned. “Could he be lying? Trying to confuse us as he makes use of the alien technology?”
Though the same thought had occurred to Vathrael as she listened to the human’s message, something behind the words convinced her that this was not a ruse. “I don’t think so.” Anxiety was beginning to gnaw at her. “Helm, increase our orbit to our maximum weapons range.”
“Additional readings from the planet!” Terius called out, a new edge to the weapons officer’s voice. “Massive energy buildup from multiple locations. I think they’re weapons!”
“Helm!” Vathrael shouted. “Break orbit!” Even as she gave the order, she knew the ship’s speed would still be compromised by the earlier damage. “Sirad, notify engineering that we need impulse power now!”
Moving around the central hub toward the helm station, the subcommander reached for a nearby communications panel and began relaying instructions. Vathrael did not listen or wait for whatever status update the chief engineer might provide. The matter was simple: if the impulse engines were not available, then there likely was little chance of the Nevathu being able to outrun anything directed at it from the surface. There would be no other option but to answer whatever attack might be coming. “Betria, have they locked on to us with any kind of targeting scan?”
“I don’t know, Commander,” the centurion replied, his nervousness now evident. “Wait. I’m picking up a new scan from one area of the planet. It’s directing a beam at us.”
That’s it, Vathrael thought, now certain that the Starfleet captain and her own intuition had not been lying to her. “Route that information to helm and the tactical station. Terius, target those coordinates and stand by to fire.”
Instead of acknowledging the order, the weapons officer suddenly shouted, “Incoming fire!”
“Evasive!” Vathrael ordered just before the proximity alert klaxon began wailing for attention. At the helm station, Janotra’s hands were almost a blur as the centurion attempted to alter the Nevathu’s course of retreat from the planet. “Target the point of origin and return fire!”
“Brace for impact!” Sirad shouted, and Vathrael saw him lunge toward one of the central hub stations just before the deck seemed to fall from beneath his feet. Thrown to her right, Vathrael slammed into a nearby console, falling into the centurion doing his best to maintain his own balance. The entire ship lurched under the force of the brutal assault, with a chorus of new alarms sounding in the control room. Several of the displays and panels flickered, some of them remaining dark even after the ship began to stabilize.
At the weapons console, Terius reported, “We were struck by a focused ion beam. Our shields have dropped to less than half strength. The next strike will likely overpower them. We’ve returned fire, but our weapon seems to have had no effect!”
How was that possible? The plasma cannon was capable of inflicting unbelievable destructive power from distances far greater than that separating the Nevathu from its target on the planet’s surface. How fortified was the enemy’s weapons placements to withstand such an attack?
“Fire again!” Vathrael ordered, as the alarms once more were silenced, “and route all available power to the shields, weapons, and propulsion.” Shoving herself away from the console, she made her way to the helm station. “Move us out of here!” Without a functioning cloaking device, Vathrael knew that evasive action might prove futile.
Centurion Janotra shook his head. “I’m doing so, Commander, but our engines are still not operating at full capacity!”
Studying the helm display screens, Vathrael could see that retreat—already a questionable strategy given the circumstances—was no longer a realistic option. “Sirad, route power from propulsion to the shields.”
The subcommander turned from where he now stood at the weapons station. “Commander?”
“Do it!” Vathrael barked. “We cannot escape, so we will have to stand and fight!” As she made the bold statement, she moved to the communications station and pressed the one control on the console reserved for use by only her and Sirad.
Watching her actions, Centurion Odera asked, “Commander? The distress message?”
Vathrael nodded, understanding the portion of the query the centurion had left unspoken. After all, the only reason to use the automated distress protocol was because the sender did not expect to be alive to receive a response. She had updated the information to be transmitted so that it automatically included relevant sensor telemetry and a brief status report regarding the rift’s effects. Would it be enough to warn her superiors about this new threat? There was no way to be certain, she knew, and no time to worry about it.
“We are being scanned from several different points on the planet’s surface!” Betria reported, his voice rising in pitch and betraying his fear. “I’m picking up another energy buildup. . . . Wait! Incoming fire! Multiple attacks!”
Vathrael heard the order directing all remaining power from every other system to the shields bursting from her lips, but even as she spoke she knew it would be a futile gesture. Terius had already warned her about what to expect should the ship be hit a second time by the alien weapon. All around the bridge, the crew remained at their posts and carried out their tasks, readying for the next assault and hoping for the opportunity to respond in kind. To the last, they were remaining loyal to the empire, to the praetor, and to her. Though Vathrael’s last words were in keeping with her duty, her final thoughts were elsewhere.
Good-bye, Wylenn.
FIFTEEN
“Did what I think happened just happen?”
Turning from the display screen at the center of the bank of control consoles along the subterranean chamber’s forward wall, Kirk eyed Uhura, whose expression was a mix of concern and uncertainty.
The communications officer nodded. “Yes, sir. The Romulan vessel looks to have been destroyed.”
Kirk redirected his attention back to the display. As with the other screens active in the control room, he was unable to read much of the Kalandan text scrolling across the screen. Still, and with Uhura’s assistance, he was able to discern some of the graphical representations they depicted. At the center of one screen was a large white circle, which Uhura had told him represented the Gralafi planetoid. Within that graphic was scattered a collection of more than seventy pinpoints of green light, each indicating one node in the massive and heretofore hidden planetary defense network. Blue dots, more than a dozen of them, marked the location of underground complexes such as the one in which Kirk presently stood.
Then, there had been the red dot, outside the white circle, which had represented the orbiting Romulan vessel. That marker was now gone, disappearing as though it had never existed. Until a moment ago it had been there, accompanied by columns of alien text that had told him nothing, but which Spock reported indicated the status of the defense network as it took notice of the ship and initiated what it perceived to be a necessary protective action.
A small indicator flashed in the bottom left corner of the display, and Uhura pointed to it. “This is a communications monitoring process, and it detected the Romulan ship sending a final message before . . . before the end. If I’m reading this correctly, it was some kind of encrypted burst transmission, sir.”
Nodding, Kirk said, “That’d make sense. Once somebody at their home base figures out they’re overdue for return or check-in, they’re probably going to send another ship to investigate. The ship’s commander may have been
sending a warning about the danger here.” He released a small, exasperated grunt. “It’s not like they had time to do much of anything else.” The speed of the Kalandan defense system’s decisions and actions had been uncanny as it reacted first to the presence of the Romulan ship in orbit above Gralafi and then as the vessel’s sensors began their intense sweeps of the planetoid. Uhura and Spock had narrated the situation as it developed inside the space of a minute before the first officer reported the targeting of the Romulan vessel by the automated weapons stations.
“They never stood a chance, Captain,” Uhura said, her voice low and quiet. For the first time, she allowed herself to lean against the control console, and Kirk could see how she was already beginning to shrug off the energy and stress of the past few moments. She had been afforded precious little time to prepare to help Spock and Lieutenant Boma understand and operate the Kalandan technology, but she had taken to the task as though she had been doing it for years. Kirk reminded himself that she had been in the party that had accompanied Spock into the depths of Kalandan Outpost 1, bringing to bear her remarkable xenolinguistic skills to assist in deciphering the extinct race’s language.
“It was a damned slaughter,” said McCoy, standing alongside Ambassador Sortino after having emerged from what Boma had described as the Kalandan equivalent of a medical bay. He and the ambassador remained several paces away from the consoles so as to give Spock, Boma, and Uhura room to work.
Unable to disagree, Kirk could only shake his head in disappointment. Might the tragic outcome have been avoided? Possibly, though Kirk could not fault the Romulan ship’s commander for the logical, tactically sound steps he likely had taken to protect his vessel and crew, and which doubtless had brought about their destruction by a force against which they had stood no realistic chance of defending. There would have been no way for the Romulans to know that.
A waste, Kirk conceded.
Sortino added, “I don’t understand. If this defense system—or whatever it is—activated automatically in response to the Romulan ship’s presence and basically blew it out of orbit, why didn’t it do the same thing to the Huang Zhong?”
Turning at the sound of approaching footsteps, Kirk saw Spock and Boma crossing the room toward them, coming from the consoles they had been monitoring during the engagement with the Romulan ship. “How about it, Spock?” asked the captain, already piecing together the likely hypothesis.
“I cannot be certain without further study, of course,” the first officer replied, “but, based on what we know of the Huang Zhong’s crash, the vessel likely did not present itself as a threat in the same manner as the Romulan ship. It had already sustained heavier damage due to its passing through the energy field. Perhaps the defense system scanned the ship and determined its threat potential to be minimal.”
Boma said, “Until we retuned our sensors and started poking around. As soon as we did that, everything went to hell. It must be programmed to react in different ways depending on the level of intrusion. Weapons likely bring about a more aggressive response, but even sensors capable of localizing power sources and other facilities are likely considered hostile, as well.” He sighed and Kirk noted the haunted look in the lieutenant’s face. “It’s my fault. I’m the one who reconfigured the sensors so that we could get a better look.”
Stepping toward the younger man, McCoy placed a hand on his shoulder. “You did what you were supposed to do, Lieutenant. You had no way to know what kind of reaction you’d get.” He paused, letting his gaze wander about the room. “If there’s one thing we know about the Kalandans, it’s that they tended to overprepare, and their reactions to stimuli weren’t always proportional to the provocation.”
“There must be some kind of threshold observed by the system,” Sortino said. “After all, it didn’t destroy any of your shuttlecraft or, for that matter, the Dolysian freighters who’ve been coming and going from this planet for decades. It obviously doesn’t see any of those vessels as threats.”
“The system is obviously able to distinguish the capabilities of approaching vessels,” Spock said. “Neither our shuttlecraft nor the Dolysian freighters or support craft pose an obvious threat, and the Dolysians possess no sensor technology capable of detecting the presence of these subterranean installations or the power generators required to operate them.”
McCoy snorted. “Sure, but what would’ve happened in, say, fifty or a hundred years, when the Dolysians developed the kind of technology that would allow them to find this place? What might’ve happened then?”
“Depending on the scope of any hypothetical Dolysian probe or expedition,” Spock said, “it is likely the Kalandan technology would have acted against any perceived threat in much the same manner it has already demonstrated.”
“Yes, I know that, Spock,” the doctor replied, rolling his eyes and waving as though to indicate the entire room. “We have to find a way to shut all of this off, before the Dolysians or some other innocent ship does something to make it mad.”
Kirk looked to Spock. “What do you think?”
“Doctor McCoy is correct,” the Vulcan said. “This equipment is too dangerous to leave operating on its own, particularly now that we have established formal relations with the Dolysians. The increased number of Starfleet and Federation civilian space vessels in this region only increases the threat represented by this technology.” He paused, looking about the chamber, before adding, “However, the potential it holds should not be dismissed. This facility and the others like it are far more complex than the installation we found on Kalandan Outpost 1. The technology itself is less advanced, but based on what Mister Boma and I have already found, there would seem to be little doubt that this planetoid was intended for some greater purpose than the other outpost.”
“What do you mean by that?” Kirk asked.
By way of reply, Boma made his way to the control console Uhura had been monitoring. He touched several of the console’s flat black plates in sequence, each contact bringing with it a string of melodic tones accompanied by new lines of Kalandan text on the station’s central display. “During our investigation, we discovered what looks to be a data storage facility located about two kilometers beneath us. The thing is massive. If I did the math correctly, we’re talking about a data warehouse holding more information than Memory Alpha and Memory Prime combined.”
“That’s one hell of a lot of storage,” McCoy said.
Kirk replied, “Bones, your talent for understatement knows no bounds.” Memory Alpha, the central repository housing information pertaining to the historical, cultural, and scientific achievements for each of the Federation’s member worlds, was among the largest such archives in existence and was available to anyone who wished to make use of its extensive collection.
“This is incredible,” Sortino said, her amazement evident in both her voice and expression. “The library of an entire civilization, right here beneath our feet.”
Boma nodded with no small amount of enthusiasm. “Exciting doesn’t even begin to describe it, Ambassador.”
“In addition to the data storage complex,” Spock added, “there is evidence of a vast communications array, which we’ve been able to determine is activated soon after the energy field surrounding the planetoid opens and allows passage. It’s quite possible that this system transmitted or received instructions during the intervals that the rift was open.”
“Or updates?” Uhura asked. When Kirk and the others looked at her, she shrugged. “If it’s supposed to be a library, it makes sense that the Kalandans would want to keep it updated.”
“But they’ve been dead for thousands of years,” McCoy said. “So, who the hell has this planet’s computer system been talking to?”
Spock replied, “Most likely no one, Doctor.”
“So,” Kirk said, if this is an archive like Memory Alpha or some other kind of backup for their knowledge base, it makes sense for the Kalandans to have wanted to protect it.”
&
nbsp; Boma said, “It might not even be the only such repository they created. Redundant backup storage, that sort of thing. We certainly learned our own lesson on that front.”
Recalling the incident that had resulted in the loss of a great deal of data from the Memory Alpha complex, Kirk could only nod in agreement. After sustaining damage during a freak attack by noncorporeal beings that actually had been targeting the facility’s humanoid staff members, the ensuing loss of information had triggered the creation of Memory Prime and several other backup installations, as well as a network of smaller stations scattered throughout Federation space. It was hoped that the resulting division of information assets among the disparate data collection storehouses would reduce if not prevent further loss of such records.
“If what we learned at the other outpost we found is any indication,” Kirk said, “the Kalandans were very interested in decentralizing their base of power. According to the records Spock was able to access, there may be dozens of planets like that one and this one, with examples of their technology and amassed knowledge storehouses. They obviously were planning ahead for some kind of major event so far as their civilization was concerned.” Despite Spock’s best efforts, however, the Kalandans’ ultimate goal, if indeed there even was one, remained as much a mystery as the long-dead race itself.
“Imagine the information that might be down there,” Sortino said, shaking her head in amazement. “It’s obvious the Kalandans were more technologically advanced than we are, at least in some respects. Think of what we can learn from them.”
Boma nodded as he looked to Kirk. “The information and equipment in this facility alone would take years of comprehensive study, sir.”
“And Starfleet will send specialists here to do just that,” Kirk countered, “but that might have to be postponed, unless we take steps to protect the Dolysians’ interests here. We also need to be thinking ahead so far as the Romulans are concerned.” There could be no forgetting the destroyed Romulan vessel and the signal it had dispatched just prior to its destruction. More ships would be coming, he knew, searching for answers and possibly even stumbling into the same trap. Then there was the possibility that someone from the Enterprise or even Dolysia might do something else to provoke the Kalandan defense system.
