All about the area, boulders began to topple.
2319
* * *
Enterprise
* * *
* * *
7
* * *
The turbolift doors glided open, and even before she stepped out of the cab and onto the bridge, Xintal Linojj felt all eyes turn toward her. You’re imagining it, she told herself—but of course she wasn’t. Some of the crew looked up and saw her, then quickly cast their attention back to their consoles. Others kept right on looking, while still others glanced up furtively.
Linojj left the turbolift without hesitating. She’d learned a long time ago not to delay even a single step when you knew the course you needed to travel, no matter how long that course, no matter how difficult or frightening, no matter the obstacles that stood in your way. The Romulans had invaded her homeworld of Cort during her youth, and they’d stayed for nearly a decade before the Boslic had finally been able to drive them out for good. As a girl, she saw less than most, protected by her family as much as possible from the effects of the attempted Romulan conquest, but as time passed, Linojj discovered for herself the awful truth. Once she had, she rebelled however she could against the intruders, most often in subtle, personal ways that some might refuse to label rebellion at all. At the height of hostilities, when the Empire occupied her hometown, she abstained from eating all of the rations provided her, so that she and her family could subsist on what she saved should the Romulans later deny them sustenance. She refused to learn any words in the Romulan language, and thus never understood when one overseer or another ordered her to do something. She never slept at lights-out, but stayed awake into the night, planning her life free of the Empire. It had been then that she had first contemplated leaving Cort, not to abandon her people, but to find a means of protecting them, and those like them.
Linojj had been thinking about eventually joining the Boslic Interstellar Force on the day that she’d come home from school to find her mother bound in the kitchen, her arms and legs tied to a chair. Only twelve, Xintal Linojj stood and stared while the loud, clumsy sounds of an unfamiliar man emerged from the refresher. Her mother told her to run out, quickly, to meet Bornya, her older sister, on the way home from school and go with her to a friend’s house.
But Linojj hadn’t moved. She froze, knowing that the man in the ’fresher wasn’t her father, who at that time of day would be in the mines, unearthing the cormaline the Empire so desperately sought. More than that, she knew that the stranger must be a Romulan, that no Boslic would commit such an act. In hushed, hurried tones, her mother begged Xintal to find Bornya, and for the two of them to stay away from the house.
And still Linojj hadn’t moved, not until the man had come out of the ’fresher and seen her. She bolted then, dropping her textbooks and racing for the front door. She never made it.
The rest of that day had been a blur. The man—a Romulan who reeked of alcohol—locked her in the cellar. She yelled for a long time to be let out, and wept uncontrollably when she heard her sister’s voice—and screams—through the door. Her father found Xintal that night at the base of the cellar stairs, hugging herself tightly and whimpering.
Her mother and sister had survived their ordeal, and once the Boslic had finally repelled the Romulan forces for good, the two had even found a measure of peace in their lives. As far as Linojj knew, her sister never spoke of that day, and her mother did only once, years after the fact, when Xintal, as an adult, attempted to apologize for her failure to immediately do as she’d been told. “You only reacted to the situation the way that any twelve-year-old might.” Her mother, she knew, intended to exonerate her of her guilt, but the word might haunted Linojj, for she might have run away at once, saving at least her sister from a terrible wrong.
Never hesitate when you know what you need to do, she told herself as she made her way toward the command chair. She’d absorbed that lesson many times over, thanks to the Romulans, but never more so than on that day when she hadn’t prevented her sister from coming home. Linojj had suffered far worse indignities than parading wounded and incomplete before people she had known and worked with for years—and in some instances, for more than a decade. These are my crewmates, she thought as Tenger stood up to face her. In many cases, they were also her friends. It didn’t matter whether they looked at her and her missing right arm with sorrow or even pity; she knew that, no matter what they felt, they supported her.
“Commander Linojj, returning to duty,” she said as she stopped before Tenger. The security chief’s gaze held no judgment, even though he had gone on record advocating that, given her condition, she not resume active duty so soon, especially in the middle of a crisis. It had been seven days since the portal had ceased to function, and ten since Linojj had lost her arm. It would require another couple of weeks before sickbay and the medical labs finished fabricating a biosynthetic replacement for her. After surgery to attach the new limb, she would need a recovery period, as well as physical, occupational, and emotional therapy—the last of which she had already begun. Tenger had stated in his log that he believed the best course of action, for both Linojj and the crew, would be for her to wait until after all of that had been completed before she resumed her position as the ship’s acting captain.
But the security chief appeared to carry none of those opinions with him as he regarded her in her first moments back on the bridge. Ever serious in the conduct of his duties—like so many of the Starfleet security personnel she’d met throughout her career—he showed no resistance to her decision to resume her station on Enterprise. It didn’t surprise her. He had never brought their friendship onto the bridge, nor even the closeness they’d once shared when, years ago, they had briefly been lovers.
“You have the conn, Commander,” Tenger said. “I stand relieved.”
“Return to your post, Commander.”
“Aye, sir.
Linojj watched Tenger as he moved to the tactical console and relieved Lieutenant Rainbow Sky, who shifted to a secondary station. When the first officer sat down in the command chair, she ran her hands along its arms, grateful to be back where she belonged—except that, no matter how much it felt as though she used both her hands, she didn’t, and couldn’t. It still seemed impossible that her right arm ended not at her hand, but at a metal cuff affixed just below her shoulder.
No hesitation, Linojj reminded herself. She knew what she had to do. She had already grieved for her traumatic loss, and she would doubtless continue to do so—though the fact of a replacement limb virtually indistinguishable from the original would mitigate her loss—but at that moment, she had responsibilities to discharge. “Status report.”
“Portable tractor beams have been installed on all of the shuttlecraft, including both warp shuttles, and all but one have been dispatched to the surface,” Tenger said. “All CMUs have likewise been deployed.” Enterprise had begun its current mission with a complement of a dozen class-H shuttlecraft, though only nine remained: Amundsen and Pytheas had traveled through the portal, and Eriksson had been destroyed eight months earlier, during the crew’s exploration of the massive construct they’d discovered in the Jalidor Lambda system. The ship also carried a pair of Gagarin-class warp shuttles, along with a half dozen cargo management units, the latter of which came equipped with tractor beams. “All auxiliary craft are in position,” Tenger went on, “and we are awaiting final placement of the antigravs.”
The first officer looked at the main viewscreen, where an engineering technician stood on the plain of snow and ash to which Linojj and her landing party had transported ten days earlier, just before she’d lost her arm. On the outside of the portal, the technician lifted a two-handled panel and set it squarely on a smooth patch of hull. “How long before we’ll be ready?” Linojj asked. Over the prior days, she’d requested that Tenger brief her on everything that had happened during her time in sickbay, as well as on the continuing efforts to recover the captain and the
others.
“Commander Buonarroti estimates that preparations will be completed within fifteen minutes,” said the security chief.
“Acknowledged,” Linojj said. “Show me the entire portal.”
“Aye, sir,” Tenger said, and the first officer heard his fingers dancing across the tactical console. The image on the viewer, provided by an Enterprise probe, pulled back to reveal the entire structure of the portal, spreading out with a diameter of more than half a kilometer. Unidentifiable at such a remove, the ship’s auxiliary craft appeared only as specks evenly spaced around the outside of the circular construct. A moment later, though, insets appeared on the screen, picturing and naming the sixteen vessels.
Linojj quickly picked out the missing registry: NCC-1701-B/7, Galileo. She knew that one shuttlecraft had been left behind on the hangar deck because the security chief had not wanted to leave Enterprise completely without support vessels. Linojj wondered if he had specifically chosen to keep Galileo aboard, since it happened to be her favorite.
The next step in the plan to recover the captain and her landing party was simple: employing the ship’s auxiliary vessels and the tractor beams temporarily installed on them, the crew would lift the portal from the surface of Rejarris II and settle it in orbit, where its solar cells could renew its power, and therefore its function. Antigravs installed along the circumference of the structure would provide added stability. Though a delicate operation requiring pinpoint synchronization, it also seemed a straightforward effort and the most likely to work in a relatively short amount of time.
One of the other possibilities Tenger and Buonarroti had considered had been to utilize the facilities located eleven kilometers from the site of the portal. After contact with Captain Sulu and the other two crew members had been lost, and after efforts to determine how to reenergize the portal had gone on too long, Tenger had rescinded his previous order not to permit any of the crew on the surface of Rejarris II—both because of the exigency of recovering Sulu, Kostas, and Young, and because the danger the portal posed had disappeared with its loss of power. Lieutenant Commander Fenn led a landing party to the run of one-story buildings. As with every other place the crew had visited on the planet, they found it empty, but by virtue of the equipment there, they confirmed that it had been used to control the launch and reentry of the portal.
To exploit the capabilities of the facility, though, the crew would have had to overcome two impediments: they would have had to restore power to the buildings, and they would have had to learn how to operate the alien equipment. Even if they could quickly overcome the power requirements, the second problem stopped them cold. In the days since Linojj and the first landing party to Rejarris II had found books comprising chemically inscribed pages, Lieutenant Commander Kanchumurthi and his communications staff had tried to decipher that language. They believed that the inhabitants of Rejarris II “read” those chemical markers with a specialized sensory organ, but without knowledge of that organ, it made it extremely difficult to comprehend the process. As a result, even if the crew reestablished power to the launch complex, any attempt to raise the portal into orbit would have to be done blindly, with Enterprise’s engineers unable to read the labels and gauges on the equipment. With so much at stake—damage to the portal could result in the elimination of any chance to retrieve the captain and the others—Tenger and Buonarroti did not want to take the risk, except as a last resort—a position with which Linojj agreed.
“Commander Buonarroti reports that preparations are now complete,” Tenger said. “All antigravs have been put in place, all engineering personnel have returned to their assigned auxiliary craft, and all pilots have signaled their readiness.” Tenger had reached deep into the ship’s roster to identify the sixteen crew members best suited to helming the shuttlecraft and CMUs. Fortunately, while only a dozen personnel had been rated for posting to Enterprise’s helm position, Starfleet required all personnel to qualify to take the position in an emergency, and virtually everybody had spent time in simulators during their tenure as cadets. For the most part, the ship’s computer would handle flight operations anyway, because of the need for exacting coordination.
“Commence the operation,” Linojj ordered.
“Signaling all auxiliary craft to lift off,” Kanchumurthi said from the communications station. On the main viewer, nothing seemed to happen.
“Isolate one of the shuttlecraft on-screen,” Linojj ordered.
“Aye, sir,” Tenger said, and the image shifted to show Enterprise’s number 9 class-H vessel, de Laroche, rising beside the portal. It continued up for a short time before stopping and hovering. “All auxiliary craft have reached a height of thirty-five meters,” said the security chief.
“All vessels are reporting that they are in position to activate their tractor beams,” Kanchumurthi said.
“We are ready to switch control of the operation over to the computer,” Tenger said. Commander Buonarroti and his engineering team had calculated the forces that would put the least amount of strain on the portal during its move back into orbit, including the distance of the shuttlecraft and CMUs from the structure, the strength and number of the tractor beams, and the rate of ascent. In addition to placing antigravs at regular intervals around the portal for stability, they had also affixed remote sensors to the structure in order to actively and efficiently monitor the stresses during the lift.
“Engage computer control,” Linojj said.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Tenger said. On the main viewer, a bluish white cone of light emanated from below the bow of de Laroche, where the engineers had attached the portable tractor beam. It swept out to the portal and took hold of the massive structure.
“All remote sensors are reporting,” Fenn said at her sciences console. “Stresses are evenly distributed throughout the portal and within expected tolerances.”
“The auxiliary craft are beginning to rise,” Tenger said. The vessels would accelerate steadily to a safe, predetermined velocity until they had passed through the thermosphere and had reached the exobase. Once in the exosphere, they would increase speed again, at a considerably greater rate, until they could establish the portal in medium or high orbit. The operation would take hours to complete.
“Let’s see the whole structure again,” Linojj said. On the viewer, the image changed once more to display the entire portal. Although Enterprise’s auxiliary craft again became impossible to distinguish, Linojj could see the blue-white radiance of the sixteen tractor beams, which looked almost like glowing quills on the outside of the portal. The strategy called for the shuttlecraft and CMUs never to cross above the structure.
The assemblage took less than two hours to achieve its initial static atmospheric velocity. Linojj watched the procedure unfold, both in wider and narrower aspects. Over the course of the two hours, she ordered Tenger to cycle through close-up views of the six numbered cargo management units, the two warp shuttles—Armstrong and Tereshkova—and the eight class-H shuttlecraft—April, Shintral, Baré, Mitrios, McAuliffe, Archer, and Winter, in addition to de Laroche.
Almost three hours into the operation, Linojj heard the tactical console emit an alert tone. On the viewscreen, one of the tractor beams veered wildly, losing contact with the portal. “Shintral has a problem,” Tenger said.
Linojj pushed herself up, careful to remind herself that she had only one arm with which to do so. “Open a channel.”
“Open, sir,” Kanchumurthi said.
“Enterprise to Shintral.”
“Shintral, this is Verant,” came the immediate reply. The identity of Shintral’s pilot pleased Linojj. Although she had since moved into engineering, Verant had begun her tour of duty aboard Enterprise as a helm officer, and so she had experience in both disciplines. “We’re maintaining our course, but we’ve lost our hold on the portal.”
“What happened?” Linojj asked.
“We don’t know,” Verant said. “Ensign Michaels is investigating.”
/> “Commander,” Fenn said, “sensors are showing increased stresses in the portal’s hull where Shintral lost contact.”
“How bad?” Linojj wanted to know.
“Within tolerances,” Fenn said, “but increasing.”
Linojj quickly reached for the controls on the arm of the command chair and activated the intercom. “Bridge to Buonarroti,” she said. “Do you see what’s happening out there?”
“Buonarroti,” the chief engineer said. “Aye, I see it.”
“Do we stop the shuttlecraft until we can fix whatever’s happened?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Buonarroti said. “Decelerating will cause additional stresses.”
“Understood. Out,” Linojj said. Then, “Lieutenant Verant, have you located the problem?”
“Michaels here, Commander,” came the voice of the ensign. “It appears that one side of the mount for the portable tractor beam has failed and come loose.”
“Can you repair it?” Linojj asked, but Tenger spoke up before Michaels could answer.
“The direction of the tractor beam is beginning to fluctuate,” he reported. “If it should contact the portal at a different point—” Linojj didn’t need him to finish to understand the danger of altering the exactingly calculated stresses on the structure.
“Shintral, shut down your tractor beam now,” she said. On the viewscreen, the shuttlecraft’s beam winked off at once, but Linojj waited a beat until Tenger confirmed the deactivation. “Ensign Michaels, can you effect repairs?”
“If we return to the ship or to the planet’s surface, I can take a laser welder to it,” Michaels said.
“How much time?” Linojj asked, but she already knew the answer would be insufficient to stave off a catastrophe. She imagined transporting an environmental-suited engineer onto the roof of one of the other shuttlecraft in flight and having Verant maneuver Shintral over to it so that the mount for the portable tractor beam could be fixed, but she dismissed the scheme as too risky. Not waiting for Michaels to reply, Linojj said, “Lieutenant Verant, move your shuttlecraft away from the portal. Ten kilometers. Then wait for Enterprise to contact you.”
Star Trek: The Lost Era - 08 - 2319 - One Constant Star Page 18
