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

by David R. George III

  Having found no external interfaces, Buonarroti and his staff had spent two more days searching for a place they could adapt to a secondary power supply. They identified half a dozen such points, but every model they ran resulted in energy streaming unevenly through the portal, leading to overloaded circuitry and damaged components. Eventually, they realized they had to abandon the approach.

  The chief engineer had then conceived of finding a solution by introducing secondary power at multiple points, rather than at just one, thereby balancing the flow. The Enterprise engineers spent another day programming and executing such simulations. They all finished with the device actually exploding.

  Five days, Buonarroti thought. Five days and we’re nowhere. He understood, of course, that every step they took, even false steps, helped bring them closer to their ultimate goal. But he also understood that, with each day that passed, Captain Sulu, Ensign Kostas, and Ensign Young faced potential dangers on an unexplored world.

  “Commander?”

  Buonarroti looked up from his console, on which the outcome of his latest simulation had just completed unsuccessfully. Science Officer Fenn stood beside him. “What can I do for you, Borona?”

  Fenn’s head jerked back a couple of centimeters, as though she’d been slapped. Buonarroti realized his mistake, addressing her by her given name while on duty. Though he never minded such familiarity, even in a professional setting, and he didn’t think Fenn did either, the captain’s formal demeanor had, of necessity, influenced the entire crew.

  “Sorry, I’m just tired,” he said. “How can I help you, Commander?”

  “I’m hoping that I can actually help you,” Fenn said. “We haven’t quite figured out the physics of it yet, but we’ve at least determined how the portal creates a link between two points.”

  “Without the underlying physics, I’m not sure how much that helps,” Buonarroti said.

  “Allow me to show you,” Fenn said. She held out her hand and opened it, revealing a data card. Buonarroti took it and reached to insert it in an input slot on his console.

  “What is it?” he asked, even as a schematic of the portal appeared on his display.

  “These are readings the probe gathered while the structure was in operation,” Fenn said. She leaned in and, at the four compass points, touched the circle representing the portal. Five-pointed stars blinked onto the screen, each of them colored yellow. “These are field generators,” she said.

  “What type of field?” Buonarroti asked.

  “That’s the surprise: the generators produce subspace fields,” Fenn said.

  “Subspace?” Buonarroti asked. “I thought the population on Rejarris Two wasn’t that advanced.”

  “We didn’t think they were,” Fenn said. “The generators are very rudimentary, though, and it might be that they developed them while working to produce the portal.” Fenn double-tapped at the screen with all of her fingers, then made a twisting motion. The four stars representing field generators duplicated and moved into new positions around the circle of the portal. Fenn did it a second time, copying the eight stars and making them into sixteen. “These are all the generators in the structure,” she said. “Together, they somehow create the extra-dimensional path away from Rejarris Two. What’s particularly important is that the number, intensity, and relative positioning appear to be critical to forming the pathway, but there are no variables controlling the point in space and time to which the portal links.”

  “That sounds like it might not be possible to reverse the flow,” Buonarroti noted, the information more than a little disappointing.

  “It means that the people who built it couldn’t do it, or at least didn’t do it,” Fenn said. “It doesn’t mean that we can’t do it. But it does mean that maybe Captain Sulu’s solution to reenergize the portal might be the right one.”

  Just before contact had been lost with the landing party, the captain’s last message had been to suggest a means of powering the portal again: by reestablishing it in orbit about Rejarris II. The structure contained both antigravs and thrusters, indications that it had been designed for space. Additionally, the trail of particles they had detected in orbit had led them directly to the portal in the first place.

  “I’m sure we could maneuver the structure back into orbit,” Buonarroti said, “but I was reluctant to do that because, without knowing how it works, it could alter its settings and therefore its destination.”

  “But now we know that the pathway, at least with how the portal is presently configured, is static,” Fenn said. “If we haul it back into space, the destination will move into space above the planet on the other side.”

  “Captain Sulu’s reasoning was sound,” Buonarroti said. “By taking the portal back into orbit, above the cloud cover, we provide it with its original power source: the sun. We wouldn’t have to alter the device, and therefore wouldn’t risk disrupting the way it functions.”

  “It might seem like an audacious plan,” Fenn said, “but I think it’s the one with the best chance of succeeding.”

  “I think you might be right,” Buonarroti said, but something else troubled him. “But all we’re talking about is restoring power to the portal so that we can reestablish contact with Captain Sulu’s landing party. We’re still not addressing how to bring the captain and the others back.”

  “No,” Fenn agreed, “but the captain’s last message also told us that she intended to keep searching for those who actually constructed the portal. If she can find them, and if they can help us modify the device, then being in contact with the landing party could be critical.”

  “I heard too many ifs in that sentence for my liking,” Buonarroti said. He pressed a control and Fenn’s data card slid out of the input slot. He took it and stood up. “Come on,” he told the science officer.

  “Where are we going?” Fenn asked.

  “To make our case to Commander Tenger.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Sulu lay on the deck of Amundsen in a bedroll, trying to rest but failing miserably. She had trouble shutting her mind down. Bad enough that she had been involuntarily flung through the universe to a place she didn’t know, and from which she might never return, but the responsibility of having two of her crew marooned with her exacerbated the situation. She felt sad and lost, and she knew from experience that hopelessness lurked somewhere close.

  Five days, she thought. It’s been five days. She knew that the Enterprise crew hadn’t abandoned their attempts to power up the portal, to reinstitute communications with the landing party, and ultimately to rescue them. Still, even though the captain knew such efforts would require time, she had to admit to herself that she’d expected to hear something from Tenger by that point.

  Sulu raised her head to glance over at Ensign Young. He sat with his feet dangling over the edge of the antigrav stretcher, a padd in his lap. His attention had wandered from whatever he’d been reading, though, and he stared over at the captain. He reached up and covered the end of the tracheostomy tube protruding from his neck. “Are you all right, sir?” he asked. His voice sounded rough and weak.

  Sulu pushed herself up to her knees. “I’m fine, Ensign,” she said. “How are you feeling?” Young’s recovery had initially been slow, his edema easing but not abating during the first three days after Kostas had administered the antivenin. At last, though, on the fourth day, his condition had shown significant improvement, his breathing finally returning close to normal. And today he was actually able to rise and move about the cabin, Sulu thought. And his color’s back. Until that day, his skin had displayed a sickly pallor.

  “I’m improving,” Young said. “And I’ll be happy when I can remove this thing.” He pointed to the tracheostomy tube, a smaller version than the one Kostas had initially inserted into his neck. The young engineer had so far demonstrated proficient skills as a medic, but still preferred to wait until they got back to Enterprise so that Doctor Morell could do the final removal.

&nb
sp; “It’ll come out soon enough,” Sulu told him. “In the meantime, don’t strain yourself. Save your voice.”

  Young nodded as Sulu stood up and moved to the front of the cabin, where she took a seat beside Kostas. “Couldn’t sleep, sir?” the ensign asked.

  “No,” Sulu said. “I guess I’m not used to having so much time off.”

  Kostas chuckled. Since losing contact with the Enterprise crew, the captain and her two crew members had spent the intervening five days searching the surface of the planet on which they found themselves. They first stopped at the break in the forest Sulu had found, where they’d managed to excavate the small piece of metal her tricorder had found. Not even as large as a human fingertip, the nodule looked like nothing of any particular note. Scored black, with a rough patch where it might once have attached to another piece of metal, it could have come from the hull of a spacecraft, as the tritanium and duranium within it suggested, but it might also have been a part of an aircraft fuselage or even something else entirely.

  Since then, Sulu and Kostas had been taking shifts at the helm, tracing the search pattern that the captain had devised. At first, they had followed grids in a spiral centered at the portal’s destination point, where they had left Pytheas. In that way, they stayed close enough to the area that they could return there in relatively short order should they receive a transmission from Enterprise. After three days, though, the captain had chosen to fly farther afield, concerning herself more with finding those who had created the portal than reestablishing contact with her crew.

  Sulu gazed through the viewport. A rolling grassland passed beneath the shuttlecraft, its gentle rises and mild falls putting the captain in mind of a rolling green ocean. A small herd of four-legged animals roamed atop the next hill, but Sulu saw no signs of civilization—no cities, no towns, no primitive settlements.

  And then she heard the sensor panel emit a three-toned signal. She and Kostas had programmed alerts to sound if scans detected signs of intelligent life: controlled power, road systems, manufactured structures, and the like. The ensign read from her display. “Sensors are showing refined metal,” she said.

  “Are there any life signs?” Sulu asked.

  “No,” Kostas said, skillfully working her panel. “But I’m seeing tritanium . . . duranium . . . rodinium—”

  “All materials commonly used in constructing starship hulls,” Sulu said. “Where is it?”

  “Bearing three hundred thirty-five degrees,” Kostas said. Sulu operated the helm and brought Amundsen to port. When she had straightened the shuttlecraft’s course, she looked out, eager to see what they had found. One hill drifted below, and then another. Eventually, Kostas said, “Range: one hundred thirty meters.” She pointed ahead of them. “It’s just over the second rise.”

  The land flowed and ebbed and then flowed again. Sulu watched as the land fell away once more after that to reveal not merely a valley beyond it, but a midsize crater, several dozen meters across. In the middle of the sinuous prairie, among tall grasses waving gracefully in the wind, a circular hole had been gouged from the earth, the soil within it charred and left devoid of life.

  There could be no doubt of the cause. Wreckage littered the crater. Whatever had crashed there had been reduced to fragments. No one could have survived.

  “Was it a ship?” Kostas asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sulu said. “Maybe a small one.” And she thought: Like a shuttlecraft.

  “Did it belong to the inhabitants of Rejarris Two?” Kostas asked. “The ones who built the portal?”

  “I don’t know,” Sulu said again. “Maybe.” The idea filled the captain with melancholy, but at the same time, if it had been a vessel manned by Rejarris II natives, then it could mean that Sulu and Kostas and Young had a good chance of finding others. After all, an entire planetary population had gone missing, and not just the complement of a single small ship. “We need to find out.”

  Sulu changed course and started Amundsen on a descent into the crater. As the shuttlecraft slipped down past the rim, the nature of what had taken place there became even clearer. The ground appeared blackened and sterile, and no part of the vessel had survived intact.

  As Sulu set Amundsen down, Kostas moved to the aft bulkhead. She returned with two phasers, tricorders, and communicators. The captain instructed her to leave a communicator with Ensign Young as well, so that he wouldn’t have to cross to the front of the cabin if he needed to contact Sulu and Kostas. “We’ll check in every fifteen minutes,” Sulu told Young. She didn’t bother to give him instructions on what to do if they failed to keep in communication with him, because what could he do?

  Outside, Sulu closed the hatch and paced slowly to the center of the crater. Fragments of metal lay all around, most no larger than a fingernail. She scanned the area with her tricorder and saw that some of the debris had been driven deep into the ground.

  “There are a few larger pieces,” Kostas said, consulting her own tricorder. The ensign walked a short distance away while Sulu dropped onto her haunches. The captain picked up a small piece of metal and held it in her palm. She did not want to imagine the incredible force required to tear the vessel apart so thoroughly, nor what such a force would have done to anybody inside it.

  Sulu scanned several bits of metal, confirming the readings Ensign Kostas had taken aboard the shuttlecraft. She stowed several of the fragments in a small compartment in her tricorder, then stood back up. She looked over at Kostas and saw her agape. The ensign stood motionless, her gaze glued to a larger section of metal that she held in one hand. It had ragged edges and was as large as her forearm.

  “Ensign, what is it?” Sulu asked, walking over to her. “Have you found something?” By way of explanation, Kostas handed the metal piece to the captain. Sulu looked at it and saw its scorched gray-white surface adorned with a single word in Federation Standard, the name of a Starfleet vessel she recognized.

  It was Excelsior.

  2308

  * * *

  Excelsior

  * * *

  * * *

  6

  * * *

  Captain Hikaru Sulu exited the starboard turbolift and walked onto the bridge of Excelsior. That late at night, at the beginning of gamma shift, the lighting had dimmed as part of the simulated circadian cycle aboard ship. The dusky setting matched Sulu’s mood: his fatigue left him bleary-eyed. He found great satisfaction in the crew’s current exploratory mission out on the frontier, but it had been months—Nearly a year, he thought—since the ship had visited a starbase. No matter the activities and amenities aboard Excelsior, no matter the participation in an occasional landing party, it sometimes became emotionally imperative for the crew to get off the ship specifically for rest and recreation.

  As Sulu crossed the bridge to the command chair, he glanced over at the main viewscreen. He expected to see some particularly beautiful M-class world composed of blue skies, green continents, and white clouds, or a spectacularly ringed planet, or maybe even something completely new to him; although still in his first year aboard ship, Gallin Ressix had served on Excelsior long enough to know what qualified as unusual when viewed through the prism of the captain’s long experience in Starfleet. Instead of some marvelous or strange astronomical sight, though, the curve of a beclouded, nondescript planet filled the bottom half of the viewer. “Lieutenant,” Sulu said as he reached the command chair, “this better be interesting enough to keep your captain from a good night’s sleep.” Sulu had been in his quarters, about to climb into bed, when Ressix had contacted him; he’d had to put his uniform back on before going up to the bridge.

  The young Bolian officer stood up from the command chair. “Begging the captain’s pardon,” Ressix said, “but what would a virile man like you need with sleep?”

  Sulu maintained a steady expression, but he felt like both smiling and wincing at the jest. He felt good, both physically and mentally, but, more than a year removed from his seventieth birthday
, he had to admit that he had slowed down some. “Bucking for promotion again already, Mister Ressix?” he said. “You just made lieutenant last month.”

  “Somebody has to be ready to step in when the captain’s asleep.”

  Sulu offered Ressix a curt nod and a smile that touched only half his mouth. “Do you know what else happens when the captain sleeps?” he asked. “All over the ship, refreshers are cleaned.” Ressix responded with a knowing smile that suggested he enjoyed the byplay, even when it turned at his own expense. Sulu appreciated the young man’s sense of humor, with which he walked the line between acerbic insouciance and outright insubordination—a delicate balance, even for seasoned veterans.

  The captain also saw a great deal of potential in the junior-grade lieutenant, who, like Sulu, had chosen in his nascent starship career the position of helm officer; also like Sulu, he’d elected to do so as a member of the command division. Ressix typically piloted Excelsior during gamma shift, but when Crajjik had devised that month’s duty roster, he’d approached the captain about giving the young officer a taste of the center seat. Sulu had agreed with his first officer. He supposed he would soon learn the wisdom of that decision.

  “So what’s interesting enough for you to call the captain to the bridge after twenty-four hundred hours?”

  Ressix gestured toward the main viewer. “This is Rejarris Two,” he said. At the end of alpha shift, when Sulu had left the bridge, the crew had been studying the third planet in the system, a task they had been near to completing when he’d asked for a status report during beta shift. “We finished surveying the last of the five gas giants orbiting this star, and we arrived here at twenty-one fifty.” Rejarris numbered just one among many of the charted but unexplored suns Excelsior had visited since the ship had departed Helaspont Station ten months earlier. With no set agenda, no predefined course, and a mandate from Starfleet Command to explore simply in the pursuit of knowledge, the crew had added several scientific discoveries to its list of achievements.