Star Trek: The Lost Era - 08 - 2319 - One Constant Star

by David R. George III

  The unanticipated readings gave Sulu pause. Where she had expected a poisonous atmosphere and unrelenting, lethal heat, sensors found non-toxic air and wintry conditions. An explanation began to percolate in her mind, an intuition, but she pushed it away in favor of waiting for concrete information to tell the story. “What about life signs?”

  “Indeterminate,” Fenn said. “There appears to be some sort of substrate within the planet’s land masses that interferes with biosensors.” She turned fully back to her station and worked her controls again. “But I’m reading ports on bodies of water, and ships in those ports. There are buildings . . . what look like towns and cities . . . connected by complex road and transit systems.”

  “Captain,” said Tenger, “there are a number of artificial satellites in low orbit.”

  Sulu spun her chair to face the security chief. Standing on muscular legs, the stocky Orion had broad shoulders and a barrel-shaped chest. “Has the Enterprise been detected?” Sulu asked him.

  “Negative,” Tenger said. “We have not been scanned. Sensors show that most of the satellites are configured for communications, and possibly for global positioning, but regardless, I’m reading no signal traffic to or from any of the devices.”

  “And there’s no indication of warp travel in or around the system?” Sulu wanted to know.

  “No, sir,” Tenger said. “At least not recently.”

  Sulu turned her chair forward again. “So we know that the civilization here has begun to reach out from their world into space. They’ve sent satellites into orbit, but we’ve explored most of this solar system and seen no evidence that they’ve developed interplanetary, much less interstellar, travel.” Speaking to her first officer, she asked, “Recommendations?”

  “Under normal circumstances, I’d suggest transporting a landing party down to an uninhabited location so that they could gather more detailed readings on both the planet itself and the people who live on it,” Linojj said. Starfleet’s Prime Directive barred interference with pre-warp cultures, meaning that the Enterprise crew could not reveal themselves to the natives of the planet below. “In this instance, when our biosensors aren’t able to identify life-forms on the surface, we can launch a high-altitude probe instead. Even if it can’t get close enough to the surface to overcome the interference, it can still fly below the overcast and provide visual reconnaissance, which would allow us to definitively pinpoint unpopulated areas.”

  “Sensors are showing no air traffic and no active monitoring of the skies,” Fenn added, “so a probe would likely go unnoticed.”

  “We can also calibrate the probe’s guidance system to use the clouds for cover,” Linojj said, “having it emerge only for short periods to ensure the most effective concealment.”

  “Agreed,” Sulu said. “Prepare a class-three probe and launch when ready.” As her crew worked to fulfill their orders—Fenn would program the automated device, Tenger would launch it, and Young would validate its telemetry, while Linojj would oversee the entire endeavor—the captain wondered what they would find on Rejarris II. Unbidden, her earlier suspicion about the reason for the conditions on the planet recurred. She hoped that she was wrong.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  An indicator on the communications console winked green, and a flood of data poured across the display. “Confirming comlink to the probe,” said Ensign Young. “Awaiting visual signal.”

  “Thank you,” the captain said. “Put it on the screen when you have it.”

  “Yes, sir.” Young tapped at his controls to analyze the quality of the incoming transmission. While it maintained its integrity, he saw a slight degradation in the upload rate. Back at the Academy, from which he’d graduated less than a year prior, one or another of his instructors had taught him that such a dip in performance most frequently resulted from a failing component, but his months aboard Enterprise told him something different. It seemed more likely to him that the considerable volume of information in the data stream had combined with the high bandwidth of the ship’s network processors to cause the generation of noise in the signal. By bringing a few of the backup nodes online and actually narrowing the bandwidth, he could eliminate that noise and thus increase the transmission rate.

  Without notifying anybody of his evaluation or seeking anybody’s approval, Young made the adjustments to the comm system. He’d learned that as well in his time on Enterprise: to have confidence in his abilities, and to recognize the importance of—sometimes even the need for—acting independently. It gratified him to see the upload rate immediately rise, with no corresponding loss of data.

  A second indicator on his console flashed from yellow to green, and Young responded at once. “The probe has begun visual surveillance,” he said. “Transferring the feed to the main viewer.” He operated his controls, marrying the deed to his words.

  On the viewscreen, the image of the planet vanished, the dirty arc hanging against the black, star-speckled depths of space replaced by an uneven and rapidly moving field of grayish brown. Young watched in silence, waiting to see what Rejarris II looked like. He wanted to know what the alien world held in store for the Enterprise crew in general, and for him in particular. Cities and ports and transportation systems signified an industrial civilization, and no matter how advanced or undeveloped that pre-warp civilization, Captain Sulu would want it studied. She would order a landing party to the surface, where they would study the planet up close and the inhabitants from afar. If the Enterprise personnel could learn enough about the alien society—enough so that they could disguise themselves and blend in—they would masquerade as locals and enter a city so that they could surreptitiously observe the culture at close range.

  The idea of walking unrecognized through an alien settlement, functioning as a benign observer, thrilled Hawkins Young. At Starfleet Academy, he had studied to become a communications officer, but he’d also pursued a secondary concentration in archaeology. He enjoyed studying the material remains of ancient civilizations, but he also reasoned that possessing such a specialty would help him get off the ship and onto strange new worlds, where he would meet previously unknown life-forms. Since joining the Enterprise crew, though, he’d participated in only two landing parties, both of which had involved the study of deserted ruins, offering him no opportunity to encounter a living alien species.

  As a result, Young had requested cross-training as a contact specialist. He began receiving his instruction half a year earlier. He took to the discipline at once, enjoying it immensely, and consequently spent many of his off-duty hours studying on his own. It took him only four months to receive his certification as an assistant specialist, but since then, the Enterprise crew had worked only a single first-contact mission, on Beta Velara IV, and Commander Linojj hadn’t called his name for the landing party. The omission disappointed him, but he understood that, with more shipboard experience and additional training, his chance would come.

  On the main screen, the gray-brown of the cloud cover suddenly gave way as the probe descended into clear air. Young had expected a burst of color—the greens or crimsons or golds of foliage, perhaps, or some sort of ornamentation on buildings—but the city that hove into view appeared as wan as the overcast sky. The only differentiation in the hues of the pallid landscape came in the form of a dark, almost black body of water that stretched away from the alien metropolis in a torpid expanse.

  As Young looked on with the rest of the bridge crew, the probe’s optics zoomed in on the city. A legend in the lower right corner enumerated the scale, giving the area visible on the viewer as ten square kilometers. The buildings rose in arcs that fitted into a framework of circular and radial thoroughfares that defined the urban community. With the constant overcast diffusing the light, the sun threw no shadows. The vertical contours of the city dropped as it spread out from the center. Young strained to see some aspect of the design or some detail that distinguished the place from others he’d seen, but the drab setting did not impress him
.

  As the probe soared directly above the city, Captain Sulu stood up from the command chair and stepped forward, just behind Ensign Syndergaard at the helm and Lieutenant Aldani at navigation. “Do you see it?” she asked without taking her gaze from the viewscreen.

  “I don’t see anything,” said the first officer, who stood beside the command chair. “It’s all gray. It looks almost . . . inert.”

  “It does,” Sulu agreed. “Commander Fenn, scan for heat signatures or movement within the buildings.”

  “Aye, sir.” Fenn touched a sequence of control surfaces. A bluish tint washed across the image on the main viewer, blurring the sharp edges of the buildings. Some slight variation occurred in the color mask, but no red points appeared, which would have signified distinct instances of temperature variation or motion.

  “There’s no movement anywhere,” Sulu said. “Not in the city, not along the transit networks, not on the lake. There are no people.”

  “Sensors are showing no active power sources either,” Tenger said.

  Sulu paused, then ordered Fenn to return the image to a normal view and magnify it. The tinge of blue faded and the picture sharpened before it shifted, bringing a single square kilometer of the city into focus. Young tried to determine if something specific had caught the captain’s attention, but he saw nothing of any note. Sulu asked to see a different section of the landscape, and then another. Finally, she said, “It looks as though everything’s been covered by a dull blanket of material. Has it snowed there?”

  “No, sir,” Fenn said. “The city stands near the planet’s equator, in one of the warmer regions. The surface temperature is nine degrees, well above the freezing point of water.” Her hands fluttered across her panel. “The ground and buildings are all covered, though, Captain, but not by snow. It’s a layer of ash, several centimeters deep.”

  “Ash,” Sulu said, with a disgust that would have been appropriate if she’d had a mouthful of it. For a few seconds, Young did not understand the captain’s reaction, but then she asked another, telling question. “How high are the radiation levels?”

  Nuclear winter, Young thought, and he understood that everybody else on the bridge would draw the same conclusion. The uninterrupted clouds surrounding the planet, the coating of ash across the city, the lack of movement—it all pointed to the catastrophe of a nuclear war. Young had seen no obvious scars from such an attack, but that did not mean that atomic weapons had not detonated elsewhere on the planet. Indeed, he thought that the city wore its stillness like a cloak of death.

  “The amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface is high,” Fenn reported. “That corresponds with a lack of ozone I’m reading in the stratosphere, which could have resulted from firestorms across the planet that sent soot up into the mesosphere. But scans are not picking up any indication of fallout. That could be the result of the amplified UV radiation overwhelming the sensors, or because of the interfering substrate in the soil, or simply due to a reduction of those levels over time.”

  “If it’s been long enough for fallout to dissipate, wouldn’t the skies have cleared as well?” Sulu asked.

  “Probably,” Fenn said, “but that would also depend on a number of factors, including the amounts and locations of the nuclear material released, as well as meteorological conditions, both at the time of the release and overall for the planet.”

  Sulu paced back to the command chair, though she did not sit. “Ensign Young, what do your instruments show?” she asked. He’d been so intent on the planetary conditions and on following the conversation that the mention of his name startled him. “Are you picking up any type of communications signals at all? Even automated ones?”

  Young consulted his panel, then performed a quick secondary scan. “No, sir,” he said. “I’m not reading any comm traffic at all.”

  The captain seemed to consider that. “Commander Tenger, adjust the course of the probe. Have it follow one of the transportation routes to another city.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  As Sulu sat back down in the command chair, Young watched the main screen. The city receded from view, until it disappeared when the probe ascended into the clouds. It’s not cloud cover, he reminded himself. It’s smoke.

  Within just a few minutes, the probe reached a much smaller settlement—less a city than a town. Nevertheless, the same conditions prevailed: a layer of ash covered everything, and the Enterprise crew detected no sign of the planet’s inhabitants, either inside or outside the buildings. Before the captain ordered the security chief to send the probe onward, though, Fenn espied several distinctive shapes in a field. When she notified Sulu, the captain ordered a close-up view. Half a dozen ash-covered mounds appeared, all with familiar shapes.

  “Are those what they look like?” the captain asked.

  “They appear to be the skeletal remains of arivent-like animals,” Fenn said. Young had never heard the word arivent before and suspected that it belonged to the science officer’s native Frunalian tongue, but then she amended her statement. “Horse-like animals.”

  “And we still don’t see any people,” Sulu said. “Not living, not dead.” Young thought to point out that perhaps the bodies of the population who had constructed the civilization on Rejarris II lacked any internal structures that would survive decomposition, but the existence of the equine skeletons made such a claim unlikely.

  “Maybe this town and the city we saw were abandoned,” suggested the first officer. “There’s no obvious destruction, so maybe the ash was deposited by some sort of nuclear accident, rather than as a result of a military conflict.”

  “Maybe,” Sulu said. “Commander Tenger, set the probe’s course to continue following one of the transportation routes. Let’s see what else we can find on this planet.”

  They found the same conditions prevailing in the next city, although they also discovered a complex on its outskirts clearly designed to launch rockets—a capability consistent with the artificial satellites orbiting the planet. The captain ordered five additional probes deployed, spaced evenly across the surface of Rejarris II. On every continent the probes searched, in every city and town, the Enterprise crew encountered the same situation. They also located additional launch facilities, but because they’d already surveyed the five outer worlds and their moons—none of them class M—they knew that the people of the second planet did not evacuate to any of those, and long-range scans of the innermost world in the system showed that it had no atmosphere, resulting in temperature swings from two hundred degrees below zero to five hundred above, all of which ruled it out as a possible haven. Despite being much cooler, neither of Rejarris II’s pair of moons held an atmosphere, though Young thought that the captain would likely want to examine the two natural satellites more closely at some point.

  Commander Linojj proposed another possibility. “Could the inhabitants have been abducted?” She appeared to hesitate before adding, “This system isn’t that far from the Tzenkethi Coalition.”

  The captain took in a deep breath, then exhaled loudly. “I can’t reasonably argue against the aggressiveness of the Tzenkethi,” she said, “but could an entire planetary population have been taken against their will? We’ve seen no signs of destruction anywhere on Rejarris Two.”

  “Maybe they left voluntarily,” Linojj said. “Maybe the Coalition helped them escape whatever caused the pollution in the atmosphere and the ash on the ground.”

  “Maybe,” Sulu said, though she sounded unconvinced. “It would mark the first time I’ve heard of the Tzenkethi coming to the aid of another species.”

  “What if it wasn’t another species?” asked the navigator, Gaia Aldani. “What if Rejarris Two was the site of a Tzenkethi colony?”

  “That would make more sense,” Sulu said.

  “Or maybe the planet was never populated,” offered Syndergaard at the helm. “Could these cities and towns have been built for a colonization that never took place because of a nuclear ac
cident?”

  Sulu nodded, then glanced around the bridge. “Well, we have a lot of questions, so let’s see if we can find some answers,” she said, and then, to the first officer: “Commander, equip a landing party. I want you to transport down to one of the cities and see what you can learn about the people who built it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Linojj said.

  “Captain,” Fenn spoke up, “because of the interference with the biosensors, the landing party should carry signal enhancers with them.”

  “Linojj?” Sulu said.

  “Understood.” The first officer stepped up onto the raised, outer section of the bridge and headed for the starboard-side turbolift. “Tenger, Fenn, Young, you’re with me.”

  For the second time, the sound of his name on an officer’s lips surprised Young. He quickly secured his station, then joined Linojj in the lift. As Tenger and Fenn followed them inside, supplementary personnel moved from secondary positions to take over the vacated stations. Young saw the captain rise from her chair and address her exec. “Commander, exercise extreme caution,” she said. “Something about all of this—” Sulu glanced over her shoulder at the main viewscreen, which once more showed Rejarris II hanging in the firmament. “—just doesn’t feel right.”

  “Yes, sir,” Linojj said.

  Young more or less agreed with the captain’s assessment, but another feeling overwhelmed whatever trepidation he might have felt: excitement. He didn’t know if Commander Linojj wanted him on the landing party as a communications officer or because of his training in archaeology and alien contact, but it didn’t really matter to him. He didn’t even know if they would find any of the planet’s inhabitants, and if not, then what had happened to them, but none of that mattered either. At that moment, all Young wanted was to explore the unknown.