“Look,” Young said. Sulu saw him pointing through the forward port. Her heart raced for a moment, but when she gazed ahead of the shuttlecraft, she saw only more of the same unremarkable, undeveloped, unpopulated lowlands. “It’s a body of water.”
Sulu looked again, and that time, she did indeed see a band of blue just below the horizon. Kostas walked up from the rear of the cabin and peered through the port as Young operated the sensor panel. Eventually, he declared, “It’s an ocean.”
“An ocean?” Kostas echoed. “What should we do, Captain? Should we cross it so that we can search the next continent?”
“We haven’t finished exploring this one yet,” Sulu said. She didn’t add that she thought it far more likely that, if some of the Excelsior crew had survived, the shuttlecraft crew would find them not on the ocean, but on land.
Since leaving Pytheas behind, Sulu had flown Amundsen in the direction of the rising sun. As the shuttlecraft neared the shore, Sulu took control from the autopilot and banked to starboard. “We’ll follow the coastline for a while,” she said, “and then we’ll head back across the continent.”
In her mind, though, Sulu thought again about how she, Kostas, and Young could make it through interstellar space. With the resources on hand, it seemed impossible. But Sulu vowed to herself that, if she had to, she would find a way.
♦ ♦ ♦
Rafaele Buonarroti stood in the middle of the Enterprise bridge beside Commander Linojj, trying to keep his eyes on the image on the main viewscreen. He had difficulty concentrating. The chief engineer felt extremely uncomfortable, though he admonished himself for indulging such a selfish emotion.
Buonarroti had spent the previous two days down in the hangar deck and main engineering, first preparing to lift the portal from the surface of Rejarris II and return it to orbit, and then in the actual execution of that plan. Commander Linojj had returned to duty during that time, and he had spoken with her several times, but only via intercom. When he had walked onto the bridge a few moments earlier, it marked the first time that he had seen the results of her injury. Although he knew that she would be fitted with a biosynthetic replacement—he was actually assisting Doctor Morell and the medical staff with some of the synthetic components—seeing her with only one arm shocked him in a visceral way. He could only hope that he had succeeded in hiding his distress—or if he hadn’t, that she would forgive him.
I also need to be forgiven for not visiting her in sickbay, Buonarroti thought. They had been crewmates for a dozen years, and friends for almost as long. He could plead that he had been entrenched in the efforts to restore power to the portal, which would not be a lie, but he also knew that he could have—should have—stopped by sickbay to see her, which was a more important truth.
“What’s your assessment?” Linojj asked him.
“Um . . . well . . .” he stammered, but he had nothing to say. He felt foolish, like the boy in school who did everything at his desk but pay attention, and then, when asked a question by the teacher, had to hem and haw his way through a non-answer.
“Let’s take a closer look,” Linojj said quietly, and she headed around the navigation console toward the forward section of the bridge. Buonarroti dutifully followed, wondering if the first officer—and current acting captain—was taking him out to the woodshed. He trailed her up the steps to the bridge’s outer ring, then over to stand beside her in front of the viewer. So close to the large screen, he could not make any sense of what he saw.
Before he could say anything—and he really didn’t want to complain, not after the way he’d behaved—Linojj leaned in toward him. She moved in so close that, without thinking about it, he expected to feel her arm against his. When that didn’t happen, the incredibly serious nature of her injury struck him again.
“It’s okay,” Linojj said, so softly that the chief engineer doubted anybody else on the bridge could hear her. “I know how squeamish you can be.”
His initial reaction, no doubt born out of masculine pride, was to dissemble, but he quickly rejected that approach. He’d already let down his friend—and himself—and he would not compound his transgression with an affront to Linojj’s intelligence. “I’m sorry,” he said, keeping his voice low. “I should’ve come to see you in sickbay, I should’ve—”
“Rafe,” Linojj interrupted. “I said it’s okay, and it really is. I know how hard these things can be for you, and I also know how busy you’ve been in helping to figure out how to recover the captain and the others.”
“Even so,” Buonarroti said, “I feel badly that I didn’t visit you.”
“Well, we’re still friends,” she said.
“Thanks,” he said. A rush of affection for Linojj filled him up. He didn’t think that even a Betazoid could have demonstrated more empathy than she just had. And after what she’s been through—
“We’re still friends,” Linojj said, “but right now, I need the Enterprise’s chief engineer.” She turned and made her way back down to the center of the bridge, circling around the helm. Once again, Buonarroti followed.
When he looked up at the viewer, he saw the surface of Rejarris II. There, a great circular structure lay on its side. It looked like the portal, back in the same place from which virtually Enterprise’s entire fleet of auxiliary craft had lifted it a day earlier. “What . . . what happened?” He could barely ask the question, considering the implications it had for the captain’s rescue.
“That’s not the portal, Commander,” Linojj said. “But that is where it was.”
“I don’t understand,” Buonarroti said.
To Tenger, she said, “Magnify.”
“Aye, sir.”
The image skipped to a much tighter view, showing only a portion of the great circle. That close, Buonarroti could see that the portal no longer stood there, but had been replaced by a dark, flat surface set into the ground. A single silver stripe ran along its center. “What is that?” he asked.
“It’s a metal slab that rested beneath the portal,” Linojj said. “Ensign Young noticed it when we first transported down to the structure.”
“But it wasn’t attached to it?”
“No,” Linojj said. “But it measures precisely the same linear dimensions as the portal. So my question to you is the same as yours was to me: what is that?”
Buonarroti stared at the viewscreen, then raised his hand and wrapped it around the bottom of his face. He felt stubble and realized that he hadn’t shaved that morning. “Does the slab contain any circuitry?” he asked.
Linojj looked toward the tactical station. “Not that the landing party’s tricorders or the probe’s sensors can detect,” Tenger said. “It’s thick—twenty-five centimeters through—and as best we can tell, solid steel, with a band of platinum running through it.”
Buonarroti considered what little they knew about the portal, including what they’d actually witnessed. “I think it could be a landing pad,” he said.
“That’s what Ensign Young suggested as well,” Linojj said.
“Would a landing pad be made of such an unforgiving surface?” Tenger asked. “It has no antigravs, no tractor beams, no guidance systems.”
“It needs to bear the weight of the portal,” Buonarroti pointed out. “The portal itself has antigravs and tractor beams, and the complex eleven kilometers away—what we believe is a launching-and-landing control facility—has equipment we recognize as a guidance system.” He paused, then asked, “How did we find the portal in the first place?”
“We followed a trail of particles from high orbit down to the surface,” Tenger said.
Buonarroti nodded, thinking about how various civilizations maintained their satellites. “The portal was damaged in space,” he said. “Maybe a meteor strike, or something else in orbit colliding with it, or even some internal piece of equipment failing catastrophically.”
“We believe it might have been fired upon with an energy weapon,” Linojj said. “At least, the evidenc
e seems consistent with that possibility.”
“Whatever happened to it, the technicians at the launch-and-recall facility must have brought it back down to the surface so they could repair it,” Buonarroti reasoned. “Or if the damage occurred after the inhabitants of Rejarris Two had already departed, then the facility could have been preprogrammed to recall the portal.”
“So you think the metal slab is just a landing pad, just a target?” Linojj asked. “You don’t think that it’s vital to the operation of the portal, that the platinum ring plays some part in establishing the transition from Rejarris Two to wherever it leads?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Buonarroti said. “The portal has thrusters and antigravs, it has a facility designed to launch it. It was meant to function in orbit, not down on the planet.”
“But why?” Linojj wanted to know. “If you’re going to transplant people from one planet to another, why not do so on the ground, if that’s possible—and we’ve seen that it is.”
Buonarroti shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe to increase the efficiency of the solar cells. Maybe the portal caused ecological problems inside an atmosphere. Or maybe it once functioned in both directions, and the inhabitants of Rejarris Two feared something coming over from the other side.”
Linojj seemed to take in the chief engineer’s opinions. As she did so, Science Officer Fenn said, “Commander, sensors indicate that the portal has reached full power.”
“Put it on-screen,” Linojj said as she walked to the command chair and sat down. Buonarroti moved to the periphery of the bridge, to one of the engineering consoles. On the main viewer, the metal band on the surface of Rejarris II vanished, replaced by the circular form of the portal, hanging in space, its dark form gleaming where the system’s star reflected off it. Around it, four shuttlecraft held it in place with tractor beams.
“It looks no different,” Tenger noted, and Buonarroti agreed. Nothing on it moved, no lights shined, no thrusters functioned. The chief engineer worked his panel and tapped into Fenn’s sensor scan. He confirmed her readings. Enterprise sat a hundred kilometers away from the device, and in a higher orbit—plainly a safe distance.
“One thing that’s different is that I don’t see any tractor beams other than our own,” Linojj said.
“The portal’s tractor beams have power,” Fenn reported. “But as you noted yourself, Commander, its beams engaged and pulled Ensign Young through it only once he stood on the device itself. The tractor beam that reached out for you did so only after you had climbed atop it as well. And the beams that attacked Captain Sulu’s shuttlecraft did so when it crossed over the portal’s perimeter.”
“So it has a threshold that, if crossed by an object, activates the tractor beams, which then pull the object through the portal,” Buonarroti said. “Imagine a cylinder at right angles to the circle. Anything that enters that cylinder triggers the beams.”
“It must have a range,” Tenger said.
“I’m sure it does, and we’re about to find out what it is,” Linojj said. “Commander Tenger, you have probes ready to launch?”
“Aye, sir,” Tenger said. “We prepared some for testing purposes, and we programmed one to travel to the location Captain Sulu and the ensigns traveled to when they passed through the portal; it will then transmit your message to the captain.”
“Acknowledged,” Linojj said. “Commander Kanchumurthi, contact the shuttlecraft and have them return to the Enterprise. Remind the pilots to keep their vessels well outside the activation perimeter of the portal’s tractor beams.”
“Right away, sir,” said Kanchumurthi. As the communications officer relayed Linojj’s orders, the shuttlecraft’s tractor beams shut down, leaving the portal in orbit under its own power. The auxiliary vessels quickly departed the area.
“The portal’s thrusters are firing,” Fenn said. On the viewer, Buonarroti could just make out small bursts at various points around the circular hull. “It appears to be aligning itself perpendicular to the surface of the planet. It is not moving far.”
“Commander Tenger, you said that you initially found the portal by following a trail of particles that originated in orbit?” Buonarroti asked.
“Aye.”
“Did the shuttlecraft bring the portal to the beginning of that trail?” Buonarroti asked.
“They did,” Linojj answered. “We believe that’s where the portal orbited, so that’s where we placed it.”
“Then that’s why it’s realigning itself, but not moving very far,” Buonarroti said. “You’ve placed it where it belongs.”
“That was the plan,” Linojj said.
Ten minutes later, Tenger reported that all four shuttlecraft had returned without incident to the ship. “The first probe has been programmed to travel directly toward the center point of the portal. Once it has passed through, it will travel one kilometer in a straight line, reverse course, and attempt to return to the Enterprise in the opposite direction.”
“Deploy the probe and keep it on-screen,” Linojj ordered. Buonarroti watched with the rest of the bridge crew as Tenger launched the probe. The missile-shaped device had a hooded tip containing a sensor cluster, as well as an outboard sensory ring that circled its midsection. Nobody spoke but Tenger, who provided a countdown of the probe’s range from the portal every twenty kilometers. At ten, he began announcing the distance in increments of one.
Buonarroti kept expecting tractor beams to streak out into space and take hold of the probe, but even as it drew closer to the portal, nothing happened. The closer it got, the more the chief engineer feared that, in hauling the structure from the surface of Rejarris II and into orbit, the Enterprise crew had somehow damaged it, preventing its function. If that had happened, then they might have destroyed any chance to rescue the captain and the two ensigns.
“Three kilometers,” Tenger intoned. “Two kilometers . . . one kilometer . . .”
And still nothing happened.
Buonarroti felt defeated as the probe soared through the portal. Almost at once, though, tractor beams lashed out. Snared by the gold beams, the probe slowed. After it came to a full stop, it was dragged backward along its course. When it passed through the portal a second time, it vanished. “We’re on the wrong side,” Buonarroti said.
“Ensign Syndergaard, take us around to face the portal from the other direction,” Linojj said. “Lieutenant Aldani, maintain a minimum one hundred kilometer distance at all times, and keep us outside its cylindrical threshold, no matter how far from it we are.” After the two officers acknowledged their orders, Linojj said, “Commander Tenger, as soon as we’re in position, prepare to launch the message to Captain Sulu.”
♦ ♦ ♦
In her dream, Demora Sulu fell.
At first, she had been striding down a corridor on Enterprise, the ship bustling with activity. Her crew moved about, their familiar faces a comfort to her. She saw Xintal Linojj and Tenger, Rafaele Buonarroti and Uta Morell. Hawkins Young and Galatea Kostas. John Harriman passed by, but even though that should have seemed wrong, it didn’t.
From around the curve of the corridor, Borona Fenn had approached—but not Fenn as Sulu presently knew her. A younger, pre-Shift version of the Frunalian. The science officer’s chitinous exomembrane still covered her youthful gray-green flesh, which had yet to darken and harden to its eventual leathery consistency. Her four mammary glands had not developed, nor had her eltis, the sensory organ that stretched like a fleshy mane from the top of her nose, across the center of her skull, and down the back.
As Fenn had neared, small fragments of her exomembrane had fallen away, dropping like dead leaves at her feet. The closer she got to Sulu, the larger the pieces that sloughed from her body, the pieces of chitin crashing to the deck and shattering with a ringing, insistent clatter. When Fenn walked by, Sulu watched as the ridges on the backs of the Frunalian’s shoulders fractured and plunged to the floor, where they splintered into uncounted bits and added to the clamor
.
Up ahead, Demora’s father had strolled through an open door. He had no arms. She passed him without saying a word, continued along the corridor, through the entryway, and into a desert waste. An empty, arid plain reached in every direction, and when Demora turned, Enterprise had gone, leaving her alone on the open plateau.
And then the ground collapsed beneath her and she fell, sliding down a hard incline.
Sulu woke with a start. Her arms flew to her sides, her movements limited by the bedroll in which she slept. Somebody screamed and kept on screaming.
Sulu opened her eyes in dim light. Awareness snapped back to her at once, a manifestation of her many years high up in a starship’s chain of command. As second officer of Enterprise, as first officer, and as captain, she had often been awakened in circumstances urgently requiring her attention. She immediately recalled the situation: unable even to contact her ship, she was stranded with two of her young officers in a shuttlecraft on an unknown world, in an uncertain place and time.
Something felt wrong, though—something more than the screams Sulu heard, which her waking mind distinguished not as somebody’s voice, but as the proximity alert the Amundsen crew had set before retiring for the night. She pushed herself up, but too easily: the deck beneath her had canted, lowering her feet beneath the level of her head. She quickly pulled her arms from her bedroll and reached up along the bulkhead, searching for the control panel there.
When Sulu at last found it and switched on the overhead lighting panels, a confused jumble of shapes greeted her in the cabin. The rear section of the compartment had dropped a meter or so below the bow, and she had slid down the deck feet-first into the aft bulkhead. Opposite her, Ensign Young had slid down the length of his antigrav stretcher, his head and shoulders pressed into a rear corner as he scrambled out from beneath his bunched bedclothes. Sulu did not at first see Ensign Kostas, who had also slept in a bedroll on the deck, but then the engineer’s hand appeared from the equipment storage area, where she had clearly been thrown. Kostas pushed aside a tangle of the three freestanding chairs they had not removed from the cabin, which had piled up together in front of the entry to the storage compartment.
Star Trek: The Lost Era - 08 - 2319 - One Constant Star Page 20
