Small World

by David Mack

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  #8: Invincible Book 2 by David Mack & Keith R.A. DeCandido

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  #49: Small World by David Mack

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Copyright © 2005 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

  STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark of Paramount Pictures.

  This book is published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., under exclusive license from Paramount Pictures.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-7434-9690-6

  First Pocket Books Ebooks Edition February 2005

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Chapter

  1

  Flames licked at Araneus’s abdomen as another disruptor blast pummeled his tiny ship. One of his long, sinewy pedipalps shot down from his cephalothorax and silenced the shrilling alert signal on his wraparound helm console. Another tentacle-like appendage keyed the transmitter switch again. “Repeat,” he said, trying to speak slowly and clearly. “This is the transport Lycosa, requesting assistance. Do you read me?” A squall of static rasped from the speaker.

  The metallic, pyramid-shaped container tucked between his back legs seemed more fragile than it really was. It is probably faring better than I am, Araneus mused glumly.

  The wheel-shaped space station was barely visible beyond his cockpit windshield. It was silhouetted against the sunset-red surface of the gas giant behind it. Though it was a mere few hundred toscams away, he despaired of reaching it.

  Another cacophonous boom rattled his ship’s critically weakened hull. Araneus scuttled sideways against the bulkhead, away from the tongues of fire snaking through fractures in the gray deck beneath his legs. The acrid odor of burned hair and scorched flesh crept into his spiracles. Another alarm confirmed that the Silgov had locked their weapons onto his engines.

  It was all over. The greatest journey in Koas history was about to end in tragedy.

  With a sound like crumbling lerfo bark, a reply to his S.O.S. spat in disjointed bursts from the console speaker and echoed around him in the cramped, circular cockpit. “Lycosa …is Varkala Station…course one-four-four mark six…” A brief silence was followed by “…unidenti…stand down or we—”

  The Silgov ship broke its weapons lock on the Lycosa and unleashed a volley of plasma fire at the space station. The barrage impacted on the facility’s energy shield, which flickered like an ephemeral golden cocoon.

  Then came the station’s response—a quartet of fiery red projectiles that screamed past Araneus’s ship toward the Silgov scout, which peeled away into an evasive maneuver. Unlike Koas weapons, which were extremely limited, the crimson missiles pursued the sleek, dartlike Silgov vessel relentlessly and eventually overtook it. Four brutal explosions hammered its shields, which collapsed. Without further delay, the ship broke off its attack and engaged its stardrive in retreat.

  Araneus was about to thank his rescuers when his main console went dark. From the bowels of his ship came an ominous rumble, followed by the low, hungry roar of fire racing forward from the engines, looking for fuel to feed its wrath.

  The station was still too far away. He would never reach it in time. With four legs he clutched the pyramid against his abdomen and prayed to the Architect of Time for forgiveness.

  Varkala Station commander Cody Mui watched with mounting anxiety as the unidentified vessel fractured on the main viewer. Most of the staff in the station’s drab, utilitarian command center worked in tense silence. Eric Theriault, his operations foreman, slammed his fist against his console. “They’re breaking up. I can’t tractor ’em in without ripping ’em apart.”

  Mui turned toward his station manager, Kari Spada. The blond young woman answered before he gave the order. “Boosting transporters to quantum resolution.”

  Wiping the sweat from his palms, Mui asked, “How long?”

  “Ten more seconds,” she said.

  “Eric, can you get a lock on the crew?”

  The beefy foreman punched in a new set of commands. “One life sign,” he said. “Locked.”

  On the viewer, a
bright orange flare pulsed in the rear third of the tiny ship, which resembled a spiny sea urchin. Mui had never seen a vessel like it before. He had no idea whether its origin lay within Thallonian space or if it had simply passed through it. The only thing he knew about it for certain was that, in a few more seconds, it would explode.

  “Transporters ready,” Spada said.

  Mui nodded. “Energize.” He opened a channel to the infirmary. “Doc, it’s Cody. You got a patient comin’ in.”

  “He better have an appointment,” Dr. Safford grumbled over the comm, sounding like someone who’d been woken from a very nice dream and wasn’t at all happy about it.

  Spada initiated the transport sequence. She was still completing it as the vessel erupted and vanished in a rapidly dispersed cloud of atomized particles. Looking up from her console, she reassured Mui, “It’s okay. Transport complete.”

  The commander heaved a relieved sigh, then said, “Nice work. I’ll head down to meet our guest.” Walking toward the turbolift, he felt an extra spring in his step; apparently, the diet his wife had inflicted on him by reprogramming his replicator was working after all. He made a mental note to thank her later.

  Spada called after him. “Should we call this in?”

  Stepping into the turbolift, he said, “Let’s wait until we know what to call it in as.”

  Inside the battered Silgov scout ship Starlit Wing, the temperature was falling rapidly. Maleiras, the chief scout, supervised the repair of the damage inflicted by the alien space station. “Never mind the weapons,” she said softly. “Focus on restoring communications. We have to alert the fleet.”

  Sesslom, the ship’s soldier-mechanic, shimmied out from under the main control panel. The honey-hued skin of his delicately symmetrical face was marred by irregular smears of smoky black filth, and his silvery hair—normally coiffed into a bold vertical crest down the middle of his head—was as tangled as a thokka nest. “Communications will take at least two shavs to restore, my lady,” he said.

  “I understand,” she said. “Work as quickly as you can.”

  “As you command,” Sesslom said.

  Maleiras turned toward aft and kneeled down to look through the hatchway into the ship’s lower compartment. Coleef, the pale and slender young pilot-engineer, had so far avoided soiling her pristine garments and her mane of metallic-violet hair. The chief scout called down to her. “Do you require my help to restore defense screens?”

  “They are irreparable, my lady,” Coleef said. “I can reroute their power to long-range sensors in an oloshav.”

  “Well done,” Maleiras said, then returned to her post.

  Without shields, her ship would be no match for the alien space station. The Starlit Wing’s sensors had detected a matter-transference beam removing the pilot and the Koas’s mysterious artifact from the courier’s ship before it exploded. Now both were aboard the enemy stronghold, temporarily out of reach.

  The artifact had eluded her for now…but not for long.

  Dr. Bob Safford was no expert in arachnid psychology, but the giant black spider in his infirmary seemed a tad agitated.

  Its voice sounded like a guttural rasp. “No time to wait,” it said, frantically waving the six tentacles that dangled from its octopoid head. It rambled on without waiting for Safford to attempt a reply. “Where is my ship? Must finish journey. Need to reach Starfleet. How did I get here?”

  Mui entered like a man in a hurry, then came to a quick stop as the mammoth arachnid pivoted swiftly toward him. The commander recoiled, a reaction that Safford presumed was mostly instinctual. He certainly wouldn’t fault his boss for cowering a bit; watching the creature take shape in the middle of the dingy, decades-out-of-date infirmary—smack dab between himself and the exit—had ranked very high on the middle-aged physician’s list of all-time moments of gut-twisting terror.

  “My name is Cody Mui,” the commander said. “I’m in charge of this station. We rescued you from your ship.”

  “I am Araneus,” it said. “You are Starfleet?”

  “No,” Mui said. “We’re civilians. Mining survey.”

  Araneus waggled its pedipalps at the profusely sweating young commander. “But this is Federation?”

  “Um, not exactly.” Mui shot a tense look at Safford, who shrugged, unsure of what the commander wanted him to say. Mui pressed on. “We’re just outside the Federation border, on the edge of the former Thallonian Empire.”

  With a sharp hiss, Araneus pivoted first clockwise, then back again. “Thallonians are gone,” it said, moving forward.

  “Yeah,” Mui said, his voice a fearful tremolo. “We know.”

  Safford pointed at the pyramid-shaped box on the floor.

  Mui followed Safford’s gesture, then looked back at Araneus. Nodding toward it with his chin, he asked, “What’s in the container?”

  “The future of my people,” Araneus said. Leaning back on its hind four legs, Araneus lifted the pyramid delicately with its four forelimbs. It brushed a symbol near the base of the object with one of its pedipalps, then held out the box toward Mui. Safford leaned cautiously forward to get a better look.

  The pyramid’s sides folded outward to reveal what looked like a planet the size of a large melon, encased in a shimmering, pale-orange sphere of energy.

  Mui looked up inquisitively at Araneus. “A hologram?”

  The spider made a gurgling sound. “Koa. My homeworld.”

  The doctor was surprised to see Mui absorb that bit of news with perfect sangfroid.

  “I see,” Mui said. Seconds later he shook his head. “Actually, I don’t see. If that’s…your homeworld…why do you have it in a box?”

  “Star went supernova,” Araneus said. “Must move world to new star.” It scuttled over to a companel along the wall and, despite the apparent unwieldiness of its appendages and extremities, deftly manipulated the panel interface. An image of a star system appeared on the monitor display.

  Mui joined Araneus at the screen. “Mu Arae,” the commander said. “Eighteen light-years away. That’s not so bad.”

  “My ship,” Araneus said. “You can fix?”

  Safford knew from the pained expression on Mui’s face that bad news was just around the corner. “I’m sorry,” Mui said. “We couldn’t save your ship. It…well, it exploded.”

  The doctor was glad he wasn’t the one staring into the beast’s unreadable, huge, faceted eyes right now. After a tense pause, Araneus seemed to deflate. Its abdomen sagged to the deck and its legs crumpled and splayed around it like fractured black bamboo. Bowing its bulbous head, it muttered, “All is lost.”

  “Maybe not,” Mui said, trying to sound encouraging. “We don’t have a ship, but we can get one in no time.” He used the companel to hail the command center. “Kari, get Starfleet on the horn, tell them we need a ship here, pronto.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  “Thanks.” Mui closed the channel. Looking down at the ostensibly despondent arachnid, he said, “Don’t worry, we’ll get you to Mu Arae in a couple weeks.”

  Araneus groaned. “All for naught,” it said again. “Journey has ended.”

  “No, you don’t understand—we can get you there.”

  “My world is trapped,” the creature said. “Key is lost.”

  Safford had a bad feeling brewing in his gut. He sat down at his desk, opened the bottom drawer, and took out a tall bottle of cheap vodka and two short glasses.

  Mui asked the obvious follow-up question. “What key?”

  “Key that releases my world,” Araneus said. “On my ship.”

  “Could we make another key?”

  “Ancient,” Araneus said. “Unique. A code. Lost.” It curled its legs beneath its abdomen and ducked its head, clearly withdrawing from further conversation.

  Mui reopened the channel to the command center. “Kari, tell Starfleet we need tech-heads, good ones.

  …We’ve got a planet stuck in a box.”

  Safford pour
ed stiff drinks for himself and the commander, certain this would be only the first round of many.

  Chapter

  2

  Captain Montgomery Scott’s order, delivered with a broad grin, had been simple enough: “Jump in and see how far it goes.”

  Four mornings later, as Captain David Gold stepped from the turbolift onto the bridge and watched stars streak across the da Vinci’s main viewer, he adopted Scotty’s smile for himself.

  His blissful moment was short-lived.

  Lieutenant Songmin Wong stood next to the conn station, where Ensign Martina Barre sat, her hands planted firmly on the console. “Get up,” he said to her. “It’s my shift.”

  “Just a few more seconds,” she said.

  The captain shook his head; for the past three days, each shift change on the bridge had resulted in the same contest of wills between the pilots. Every morning, Wong wrested control from Barre, only to resist handing it over to Rusconi for beta shift eight hours later. Rusconi had proved equally possessive.

  “Solve this in the next three seconds,” Gold said to the quibbling pair, “or else I’ll take both your next shifts.”

  Barre huffed softly, her shoulders sagging as she grudgingly pushed aside the conn panel and stood up. She and Wong locked eyes for a moment of half-joking challenge. Then Barre stepped aside and Wong took his post with a grin.

  Gold didn’t blame them for being eager; it wasn’t every day that a Starfleet pilot was able to fly a ship at a steady warp 9.99 without risking calamity. As part of a classified research project, the da Vinci was charting a recently discovered, shifting subspace “slipstream” that could be entered by making the proper adjustments to the ship’s warp field. Once inside, the phenomenon greatly accelerated warp-speed travel across vast distances. The da Vinci had traveled at high warp for three days to cross the twelve light-years from Earth to the nearest terminus of the slipstream; it had taken less than four days since then to traverse more than seventy light-years, out to the edge of Federation territory.

  Ensign Susan Haznedl settled in at ops. Behind Gold, Ensign Winn Mara stepped gracefully aside as Lieutenant Anthony Shabalala took her place at tactical. Lieutenant Commander Mor glasch Tev, the da Vinci’s Tellarite second officer, stood at attention next to the center seat as Gold approached.