Star Trek: Enterprise - 016 - Rise of the Federation: Tower of Babel

by Christopher L. Bennett

  “But it only has to elude us long enough,” Reed told her. “We need a way to identify that ship as soon as possible.”

  At the engineering station, just forward of tactical, Tobin Dax raised a hand, index finger extended. “Ah, Captain, I think I might have an idea about that. If I could ask Mister Kuldip a question?”

  Reed nodded to Crewman Konicek at communications, who reopened the channel. “We have a question, Mister Kuldip. Go ahead, Doctor Dax.”

  “Uh, Mister Kuldip, hello. My name is—”

  “Just ask the question, Doctor.”

  “Sorry, sir. Um, could you tell me just what type of hull coating the G-Sevens use? Is it an ablative ceramic, or a carbon-fiber composite, or—”

  “Carbon-reinforced thermopolymer,” Kuldip replied, “sandwiching layers of silica-based aerogel foam.”

  “Ah, very good, very good,” Dax said.

  “How does that help us?” asked Reed.

  “Well, normally it wouldn’t,” the Trill chief engineer told him. “But Rigel V is nearly twice as close to the primary star as we are here, so the UV intensity would be nearly four times as great. As you may know, UV exposure can cause degradation in the matrix of a carbon composite.”

  Williams shook her head. “Good thought, Tobin, but with this kind of material, the degradation is far too gradual, and it happens over multiple repeated exposures. The amount of time this ship would’ve spent around Five wouldn’t be enough to make any measurable difference in its skin integrity.”

  “Ah,” Tobin said, “but that’s under UV exposure alone. It’s a little-known fact that if that type of composite is simultaneously subjected to a particle beam in a state of subspace phase transition, it can leave a characteristic degradation signature in the composite matrix.”

  The armory officer frowned. “A transporter beam, you mean.”

  “That is what I mean.”

  “Doctor, I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

  Dax turned away from the visual pickup and gave her a pleading look. “I’m sure we’ve discussed it before, Lieutenant . . . over one of our games of Xiangqi?”

  Williams blinked a few times. “Oh. Maybe we have at that.”

  “Right. Now, this isn’t a signature you can detect with a normal scan, but if we run it through a subspace phase discrimination filter, then any ship that’s been hit by a transporter beam in the past week should light up clear as day.”

  Kuldip had grown increasingly agitated as Dax spoke, and Reed spotted him working a control on his console while trying to appear nonchalant. The captain was about to challenge the shipyard operator when he noted movement on the main screen image. “Sir!” Achrati cried. “One of the ships is launching.”

  Williams pumped her fist in triumph. “Good going, Tobin, you spooked them!”

  “Val, Regina,” Reed said, “don’t let that ship get away.” He turned to Dax. “There is no transporter signature, is there?”

  The Trill gave a bashful smile. “Now there doesn’t have to be.”

  The Grennex was making a break for the exit, but before Pioneer could follow, a pair of the shipyard’s large manipulator arms moved into the Starfleet cruiser’s path, reaching toward it with grippers deployed. Williams was able to keep the arms from grabbing hold by raising Pioneer’s deflectors, and a couple of quick phase-cannon shots were enough to blast them out of the way. Almost immediately, though, the ship rocked from what Reed recognized as particle fire. “Three fighters have launched,” Williams announced. “And sir, the Grennex is clear and the yard’s shields have just gone up. They’re not letting us out.”

  “Niyilar Seventeens,” Veurk observed as one of the fighters took up station to the fore. “Small but powerful. Highly maneuverable.”

  “Which we’re not, sir,” Tallarico said, “as long as we’re stuck in here.”

  The fighter on the screen shot forward and strafed the dorsal surface of Pioneer’s fan-shaped hull, rocking the bridge. Reed clung to his seat arms. Veurk stumbled and caught herself on the side railing. “Mister Kuldip, you may consider your operating license revoked!” The only answer was another fighter strafing the bridge.

  Williams tried returning fire, with no effect. “Damn! They’re too maneuverable. The targeting sensors aren’t designed for point-blank range. Sir, we need to get into open space.”

  “Can you lock onto their shield generators?”

  “I’ve been scanning, Captain. They must be buried inside the asteroidal shell.”

  Tobin Dax grinned. “Um, not everything is. I think I’ve spotted a vulnerability.” He stepped over to the tactical console, pointing at her targeting display. “Val, could you target, ah, these two conduits over here? Just enough to put holes in the casings—a few meters wide should do.”

  Williams looked puzzled, but at this point she trusted the engineer implicitly despite his unsure diction. She had to divert one phase cannon from defense against the fighters, but it was doing little good in that regard anyway. The cannon fired two short pulses, causing faint flashes of light near the edge of the exit portal, amid a cluster of equipment barely visible at this range. But Williams and Dax seemed satisfied by the result. “Now,” Dax went on, “just a pinpoint rupture of this tank over here.”

  “Magnify that,” Reed told Konicek. The screen zoomed in on the equipment cluster just in time to see a third bolt penetrate a tank adjacent to one of the two damaged conduits. The tank burst and a cloud of vapor erupted into the vacuum, engulfing the two conduits.

  A split second later, a blinding electric arc jumped between the conduits, dancing and twisting for nearly half a second before it faded out. But all the interior lights of the shipyard, plus the outer shield and every active robot arm, shut down moments later.

  “Oh, it worked,” Tobin said, relieved. “I was afraid the gas would dissipate too quickly to allow a current path to form.”

  “Regina, pursue the Grennex,” Reed ordered, but Tallarico was already engaging thrusters.

  Williams, still staring at Dax, let out a laugh. “All that high-tech handwaving for your fake solution . . . and now you save our hides with a lousy short circuit?”

  Dax shrugged. “Patter should be confusing. Engineering should be simple.” He went back to his station. “Oh, and the power surge should’ve shut down any external weapons, too. That might help.”

  Tallarico fired the impulse engines as soon as Pioneer was clear, not worrying much about how radiation backwash might affect Mr. Kuldip’s precious shipyard. Reed couldn’t disapprove. But the fighters were close on the starship’s heels. Getting some distance and room to maneuver made it easier for Tallarico to evade their fire and Williams to target her own, and soon two of the fighters were adrift and the third in retreat.

  But their quarry had a significant head start, and Rigel VI’s orbital space was an obstacle course of moons, moonlets, and space stations. “Don’t worry, Captain,” Veurk told Reed. “I have three scout ships en route. We’ll be able to corner them.”

  “That’s what concerns me,” Reed told her, loud enough for the bridge crew to hear. “These people are going to great lengths to keep us from searching that ship. Its pilot may well be under orders to blow up the ship if it comes to that. If we make them feel cornered, we may lose them.”

  Still, the Rigelian scouts proved useful, herding the Grennex away from several potential evasion routes and limiting its options. Pioneer caught up to it as it neared a medium-sized moonlet riddled with mine pits. “Target their engines,” Reed said. “Maybe we can disrupt them enough to prevent self-destruct.”

  “Or, ah, trigger the engines to explode ourselves,” Dax added.

  “That’s a chance we’ll have to take.”

  Veurk shook her curly-haired head. “The G-Seven’s engines are well-shielded.”

  “Just get me close enough,” Williams said.

  A minute later, Tallarico got Pioneer into firing range and Williams took her shots. The pilot’s evasi
ons and, indeed, the solid cowling around the inboard nacelles kept her from striking a decisive blow. She kept trying, but then a navigational alarm sounded on Tallarico’s console. “Incoming ore transport! Collision course!”

  “Veer off!” Reed ordered. Tallarico angled the ship away. Williams managed to get off one more shot, grazing the side of the Grennex before it pulled out of range.

  As soon as they were clear of the moonlet, Tallarico did her best to catch up, pouring on the impulse power—tricky to do in orbital space, since thrusting forward faster would take the ship outward into a wider, paradoxically slower orbit. Normally, to catch up with an orbiting craft, one would decelerate to sink into a tighter orbit, overtake it, and thrust outward again. But there was no time to wait for that, so the only option was to blast forward and inward to cancel out the centrifugal effect. It was hardly efficient, but Pioneer was powerful enough to make it work.

  And so were the Rigelian scouts. Soon, all four pursuers were closing on the Grennex in a pincer movement. Veurk signaled the small ship and ordered its pilot to surrender and submit to inspection.

  Moments later, Dax reported, “Oh, no. Energy building up in the engine core. I think they’re going to blow it.”

  “Have your ships pull back,” Reed said to Veurk.

  “Hold on, please, sir,” Williams said. “That may not be necessary.”

  Indeed, after a few moments, Dax reported, “The sequence is reversing. The engines are shutting down.”

  A moment after that, the pilot hailed. “Don’t fire! I surrender.”

  Reed turned to Williams. “Lieutenant?”

  She replied with a rakish tilt to her head. “I have a trick or two of my own. Just before they got away last time? I fused their escape-pod hatch.” She shrugged. “These are crooks, not fanatics. I figured the pilot wouldn’t be willing to die with the ship.”

  The captain was impressed, but also a bit annoyed. “You could’ve told me that was what you were doing.”

  Her expression grew more sheepish. “I . . . wasn’t sure it would work.”

  U.S.S. Pioneer, orbiting Rigel Colony One

  “Our people were never aboard that ship,” Valeria Williams told Captain Reed as they stood before the windows of Pioneer’s conference lounge. Outside, the view was dominated by the cratered globe of Rigel Colony One, lit on one side by the diminished but vivid light from Raij and on the other by the soft blue glow from Rigel VI. Both colors and qualities of light glinted off the domes that covered many of the moon’s craters, encasing lush, terraformed biomes centered on large, ornate cities. One of those cities held a detention center that in turn held the captive pilot along with Mr. Kuldip. “It was one of the decoys, ordered to wait in orbit, get a quantity of rock beamed up to them by the relay, and then follow a preset course. This one was sent to Ryneh because it already had a number of identical G-Sevens, and because Kuldip was on the take.”

  “I see,” Reed said, studying the exotic moonscape beyond. As much as security work still felt natural to him, Reed regretted that he had to visit this intriguing locale as an inquisitor rather than an explorer. “Did either of them know anything useful?”

  “Afraid not, sir,” Williams said. “We questioned them for hours. Veurk offered them some pretty generous incentives for cooperation—Rigelians have a knack for making deals. They would’ve been happy to play along, but they didn’t have anything much to offer in exchange. Kuldip was just a tourist who got deep in debt to a Family-run casino on Two and had to start doing jobs for them if he wanted to keep all his body parts. Strictly menial stuff—the shipyard’s the closest thing to authority he’s ever had.”

  “And the pilot?”

  “Turns out she’s a Suliban.”

  Reed stared. “Not a leftover Cabal member?” he asked, though it seemed unlikely.

  “Actually she wanted to be, but she was too young. Ran some errands for them back in the day, but the Cabal fell apart before she was old enough for the genetic augmentations. Still, she was a fellow traveler, which means the Tandarans came after her, so she ran away, went underground, and ended up on Rigel X, doing menial work for whatever syndicate had a use for her.” Williams shook her head. “Same as Kuldip, too low on the totem pole to know anything we can use.”

  “That’s not unexpected,” Reed replied. “Whoever’s planned this operation is meticulous. We wouldn’t even have gotten this far if not for some ingenious improvisation by you and Doctor Dax.”

  The armory officer smiled, lifting her chin. “Thank you, sir.”

  Reed sighed. “Well, at least that’s one wild goose we’ve cooked. That improves our odds a bit.” He directed his gaze sunward, toward the inner system. “I just hope Travis and Rey are having better luck.”

  8

  Janxor, Rigel III

  THE WRECKAGE OF THE SHIP was spread out over half the mountainside. Travis Mayweather and Reynaldo Sangupta gazed up at the debris field from the base of the low, scree-covered slope, with Director Sajithen towering over them from behind. An even bigger Chelon, one of her security escorts, flanked the group, while the other escort, a Jelna exomale, worked his way gingerly up the slope, scanning the debris. “How awful,” the director rumbled. “I pray that your crewmates were not aboard this ship.”

  That was a possibility Mayweather refused to contemplate. He had lost far too many crewmates over the years, first to the Xindi while aboard Enterprise, later aboard the multiple ships he’d had shot out from under him in the Romulan War. Now he had the added burden of being their superior officer. He had given Grev and Kirk the okay to visit the archive—and he had assigned Kenji Mishima to protect them. For the first time, Mayweather had to live with the knowledge that he’d ordered someone to his death. For now, he was coping with it by reminding himself that the First Families were the ones truly responsible, the rightful targets for his anger. But he knew it wouldn’t be that simple to live with his own responsibility in the long term. The one thing that could make it easier was to help bring Grev and Kirk back alive. The thought that some random malfunction or pilot error had precluded any chance of their rescue was unacceptable.

  Fortunately, Mayweather had good reason not to believe it. “I’m not sure anyone was aboard that ship,” he told the director.

  “I do not understand.”

  The first officer spread his arms to indicate the territory around them, a largely barren volcanic island about the size of Greenland but much hotter. “Why would they have come here? The Chelons who provided the hypnoids live in the Hainali rainforest, clear on the other side of the planet.”

  “There is a major spaceport at the eastern tip of the island, in the direction the ship was headed. It draws in traders from all over the system, even Rigel IV.”

  “Yes, and that makes it a plausible destination—if we didn’t know about the rainforest connection. And we weren’t supposed to, because the evidence was supposed to be destroyed in the explosion. If they were going anywhere on Rigel III, they would’ve gone to Hainali.”

  “Except they wouldn’t have gone there,” Sangupta said, “because that would’ve tipped us off to the very connection they were trying to hide.”

  “That’s right. But if they’d avoided sending a ship to Three at all, that would’ve looked suspicious in itself,” Mayweather went on. “They had to make Three one of the shells in the game—but they sent us here, to the far side of the planet.”

  “Yeah,” the science officer answered, nodding as he filled in the rest in his own mind. “And a crashed ship in a place like this—spread out over square kilometers of an unstable rock face—we could spend days trying to find organic remains or a surviving data module before we ruled this out as a decoy.” He grinned. “But since we know they had a connection in the rainforest, that gives us an edge they don’t know about.”

  Mayweather grimaced. “Well, if the nationalists even respond to the message Sajithen sent.”

  “They will respond,” the director insisted.
“But indirect channels of communication take time, particularly in that part of the world.”

  “Let’s just hope it doesn’t eat up all our head start,” Sangupta grumbled.

  The Chelon administrator tilted her head. Her features were fairly rigid, but her uncertainty came through in her body language and voice. “So do you propose we abandon searching the wreckage and travel to the Hainali Basin?”

  The first officer thought it over. “We’ve got to check every possibility, just to be safe. But I’m going to gamble that the rainforest should be our first priority. We’ll let the local officials search the wreckage.”

  Sangupta looked over the massive pile of stone fragments that created the tenuous slope. “They’re probably better qualified to search here without starting a rockslide.”

  “Right,” Mayweather replied. “We’ve got enough coming down on our heads as it is.”

  Undisclosed location

  “We’re getting impatient!” Rehlen Vons cried, as if the knife his henchman Damreg held against Samuel Kirk’s throat were insufficient to make that point. “It’s been two days and you’ve hardly made any progress!”

  “Well, what do you expect?” Bodor chim Grev replied, trying to keep his voice firm. “You’re forcing me to work without Starfleet equipment, with this inferior public-domain translation software—an artist is only as good as his tools, you know!”

  “Oh, a skilled artist can bring out the best in any tool,” Vons said. “Perhaps you’d like Mister Damreg to offer a demonstration?”

  “You need to understand,” Grev went on in a more conciliatory tone. “Languages are made to be comprehensible. You just need to find the right way in, and they help you go the rest of the way. Encryptions are designed to impede you from getting in. It’s a lot harder!”

  “Well, if you can’t do it,” Damreg interposed with a flourish of the knife, “we don’t need—”

  “I know, I know. You could at least try putting some variety in your threats every now and then!” Kirk stared at him with alarm. “Sorry,” Grev said, half to him and half to their captors. “I get all Tellarite when I’m nervous.”