by David Mack
“Status,” Gold said as he settled into his chair.
“We’ve just passed Theta Indii,” Tev said. “ETA at the Typhon Expanse is five hours. Long-range scans suggest the slipstream extends well past the other side of the expanse.”
Tev handed Gold a padd. The captain reviewed the data. “Any sign of an end at all?”
“None yet, sir.”
“Then I guess we’re in for a long ride,” Gold said.
“It is not an unpleasant proposition,” Tev said. For the past few days, the Tellarite engineer’s tireless work ethic had kept him on the bridge longer than anyone else. He had filled the hours by collecting raw data on the slipstream, running analyses, and charting projections. What had lately impressed Gold, however, was not Tev’s indefatigable labors, but his complete lack of boasting about them. Tev gestured to the aft science console. “With your permission, Captain?”
“Of course,” Gold said. Tev nodded politely, then moved quietly to the science station and resumed his research.
Gold decided to retire to his ready room and enjoy a cup of coffee while recording a mission update for Captain Scott. As he stood up, an innocuous-sounding chirp emanated from the tactical console and hushed the already muted chatter on the bridge. Everyone stopped and turned to look at Shabalala while he reviewed the incoming transmission. “Priority signal from Starfleet Command, Captain.”
The captain’s mouth tightened into a frown. “I’ll take it in my ready room.” Quick-stepping across the bridge, Gold mused darkly, I knew this assignment was too good to last.
Commander Sonya Gomez stood next to Captain Gold in the transporter room. Like a study in contrast, Chief of Security Domenica Corsi (slender, pale, and blond) and Deputy Chief of Security Vance Hawkins (broad-shouldered, ebony-skinned, with a shaved head) flanked the two command officers. Behind them, Ensign McAvennie stood by to assist Transporter Chief Laura Poynter, who was completing the beaming sequence.
A large, languid cyclone of shimmering matter coalesced above the transporter pad with a singsong hum. Both the glow and the sound faded as the energizer coils powered down, and a massive black arachnid with a head like that of an octopus was revealed. An odor of burnt hair, mild at first, quickly grew stronger. Clutched in the pedipalps that extended from either side of the creature’s mandibles was a metallic, equilateral pyramid on a base approximately forty centimeters wide.
“Mr. Araneus,” the captain said, sounding not the least bit unnerved to be addressing a gargantuan arachnid, “I’m Captain David Gold. Welcome aboard the Federation Starship da Vinci.”
Araneus skittered forward, its eight legs rising and falling like gears in a dark machine. Poynter and McAvennie recoiled. Corsi and Hawkins held their ground without blinking. Gomez’s jaw clenched with the effort of keeping her feet still. The captain, for his part, seemed perfectly relaxed.
“Thank you, Captain,” Araneus said.
“This is my first officer, Commander Sonya Gomez,” Gold continued. “Security Chief Domenica—”
“No time, Captain,” Araneus interrupted. The lumbering alien scrambled down from the transporter pad. Everyone took two steps back to avoid being trampled. “Koa is in danger; we must reach Mu Arae as fast as your ship goes.” It pushed the pyramid toward Gold. “We must find the key. No time!”
Glancing sideways, Gomez caught the subtle nod from Gold that meant he was handing off the conversation to her.
“Mr. Araneus,” Gomez said, “we’re aware of the rather…unique predicament your world is in. I assure you, after we collect some basic information from you, we’ll be proceeding to Mu Arae at our best possible—”
The arachnid reared up on his hind legs and adopted a pose that reminded Gomez, in an unsettling way, of the Federation-standard “biohazard” icon. The creature let out a series of clicks, grunts, and hisses. Either the universal translator was unable to decipher the sounds, or they were never intended as anything other than an inchoate expression of frustration. After several seconds, with a voice like a breath from the grave, Araneus groaned, “No time!”
Then the giant spider collapsed on the deck.
A sickly gurgle escaped its maw as a viscous gray-white fluid oozed out of its mouth. As its legs splayed limply between the da Vinci personnel’s feet, its pedipalps gently stroked the base of the pyramid, whose four sides unfolded to reveal the shrunken orb of Koa, imprisoned in its glowing energy shell.
Corsi and Hawkins pulled tricorders from their belts and sprang forward to kneel at Araneus’s side.
“Poynter,” Corsi said, “relay Araneus’s transport bioscan to my tricorder.”
“Aye, sir,” Poynter said, keying in the commands.
Hawkins devoted his attention to scanning the open pyramid.
Gomez furrowed her brow. “Someone report, please.”
Corsi replied, “Best guess? I think he had a heart attack.”
“Well,” Gomez said. “We’re off to a great start. As usual.”
Gold massaged his wrinkled brow with the fingers of his right hand. “Oy vey.” He ran his hand through his sparse white hair. “Gomez, get your people working on that pyramid contraption. Poynter, beam our guest to sickbay—and warn Dr. Lense first, please.” The captain turned away from the group as he tapped his combadge. “Gold to bridge.”
“Tev here, sir.”
“Set course for Mu Arae, maximum warp.”
The transmission from Viceroy Narjam was frazzled but growing stronger by the moment. “You’re sure they removed the artifact from the station?”
“Yes, my lord,” Maleiras said, maintaining eye contact with Narjam on the small screen attached to the arm of her chair. “With a matter-transference beam, to one of their vessels.” In the front of the cockpit, Coleef was completing the preflight systems check. Down below, Sesslom was hard at work keeping the comm system functioning. “They have just departed,” the chief scout continued, “following the Koas ship’s original course.”
“What is their velocity?”
“Factor five-point-two-three.”
Narjam tilted his chin upward, clearly pleased at the news. “Very good.” He looked down and checked his console. “We will reach you in less than a shav,” he said. “Will you be ready to rejoin the fleet?”
“Yes, my lord.” Coleef swiveled her seat toward Maleiras and gestured that the Starlit Wing was ready for flight. Though the frigid temperature inside the ship was betrayed by the wispy clouds of vapor produced by her exhaled breath, Maleiras suppressed her body’s urge to shiver. She was determined to retain her dignity before her superior. “Shall we relay our tactical scans of the alien space station?”
The viceroy dismissed the query with a twitch of his delicate hand. “Unnecessary,” he said. “The artifact has left their possession. They no longer concern us. Maintain sensor lock on the alien vessel.”
“As you command, my lord. May I make a request?”
“Speak.”
“My vessel requires a replacement for its defense-screen regulator,” Maleiras said. Sesslom looked up through the aft hatch from the lower deck, eager to hear the viceroy’s answer.
“I will see it done,” Narjam said. “My engineer will transfer the component to your vessel after we arrive.”
“Thank you, my lord. Most gracious.”
“You’ve served well today, Maleiras,” he said. “And the day is only just begun. We’ll be with you shortly. Narjam out.” Maleiras bowed her head, then the channel flickered off.
Turning fully to face Sesslom, Maleiras said, “Make as many other repairs as are possible. I want defensive screens restored before we overtake the alien vessel.” Sesslom acknowledged the order with a half bow, then returned to his calm but tireless work. On the tactical display, an icon representing the alien ship crept slowly toward an unremarkable star.
Soon, the Koas technology will be ours, she told herself. Imagining the power that the mysterious, planet-shrinking pyramid must contain…trying to con
ceive of the energies it would have to harness to pluck a world, intact, from its orbit and hold it in stasis…such thoughts terrified Maleiras to the depths of her being. The only thing that terrified her more was the idea of being returned to bondage. When the pyramid is ours, she reminded herself, we will finally set our people free.
A fearful silence lingered in the da Vinci sickbay. The unconscious, mammoth arachnid lay sprawled across two biobeds and two gurneys placed between them. Dr. Elizabeth Lense shook her head. “I don’t even know where to start,” the curly-haired physician said.
Behind her, Medical Technician Dantas Falcão and Nurse Sandy Wetzel peeked over Lense’s shoulders. “The biobed’s readouts are completely messed up,” Falcão said, her pretty face twisted into a mask of frightened apprehension.
Wetzel, her arms folded across her chest like a shield, reluctantly said, “We have to do something.”
Lense picked up her medical tricorder and trained its sensors on her patient. “Dantas, download comparative anatomy data on all known arthropod species and try to recalibrate biobed two. Sandy, take a sample of that discharge from its maw and run a full chemical analysis—enzymes, molecular structure, trace elements, everything.”
Moving closer to Araneus, Lense tried to locate the center of its circulatory system—assuming that it even had one.
Wetzel collected a sample of the substance that was rapidly congealing inside the patient’s mouth. She paused. “Should we try to clear its mouth, Doctor?”
“No,” Lense said, shaking her head. “Don’t stick your hands in there.” Brushing her fingertips lightly across the arachnid’s carapace, she said, “It appears to breathe through a network of large spiracles. Don’t worry about clearing an airway.” She looked up. “Computer, activate Emergency Medical Hologram.” Overhead holoprojectors awoke with a quickly rising hum. The holographic doctor took shape in front of her.
“Please state the nature of the—” The EMH eyed Araneus with an expression of clinical curiosity. “I see. How may I assist you, Doctor?”
Handing a large and, ironically, spider-shaped mechanical device to the EMH, Lense said, “I need to place a cardiopulmonary contact monitor on the patient, but I can’t reach the center of its torso.”
“Understood,” he replied. Without a moment’s hesitation, he lifted the CPCM over his head and strolled toward the center of Araneus’s body. Adjusting his holographic matrix to make himself noncorporeal from the chest down, he passed like a ghost through the patient. He placed the monitor near the forward curve of Araneus’s prodigious abdomen. No sooner did the device’s radial extensions clamp down on Araneus’s body than its six largest limbs snapped inward, stingers extended. Lense gasped at the swift, lethal, and obviously involuntary reflexive action, then heaved a relieved sigh as she remembered that the EMH was just a photonic construct, impervious to harm.
Striding back through the clenched tangle of dark limbs to rejoin Lense, the EMH said, “I await further instruction.”
“Please assist Nurse Wetzel with her analysis.”
The EMH acknowledged Lense’s order with a brief nod, then walked away quickly to join Wetzel in the adjacent biolab.
A rattling groan from Araneus drew Lense’s attention back to her patient. Fixating on its huge, dangerous limbs, she was grateful that she hadn’t tried to place the cardio monitor herself. She had no interest in being on the receiving end of a giant spider’s fight-or-flight reflex. Recalling her semesters of xenophysiology at Starfleet Medical all those years ago, she vaguely remembered learning about the medical advances that had been made by studying the synaptic development and seemingly precognitive reflexes of arachnids. That gave her an idea.
She tapped her combadge. “Rennan Konya, please report to sickbay.”
The turbolift thrummed along, quickly traversing the length of the da Vinci—but not quickly enough for Bart Faulwell.
“So what I’m thinking,” Carol Abramowitz said, continuing a monologue that already had persisted all through their shared lunch, “is that his birthday is next week and I want to get him something nice. You know, something he wouldn’t get for himself, but that he can use, or that he and I can use together.”
Faulwell wanted to tell her to shut up, to stop talking, to keep her newfound romantic euphoria to herself, to stop being so damned happy when he was anything but. Instead, the middle-aged cryptography and linguistics expert smiled through his salt-and-pepper beard and nodded and made vague noises of acknowledgment.
He really didn’t resent Abramowitz for her recently ignited romance with Vance Hawkins. When he’d first heard the news, he’d been elated for her. Ever since she had revealed to him during the Galvan VI disaster that she had never truly been in love, he had been worried about her. Emotional openness had never been her strong suit, in Faulwell’s opinion; sarcasm impelled by a mordant wit had always been the petite cultural specialist’s forte. That shortcoming had almost led to her death on Vrinda, and he was glad that she was coming out of that particular shell.
The turbolift stopped and the doors parted to reveal the starboard corridor of deck five. Faulwell followed Abramowitz as they stepped briskly toward the science lab. She was still talking, staging a one-woman debate over what she ought to give Hawkins. Tuning her out, Faulwell reflected on the real reason for his black-dog mood. Only about a week had passed since the wedding of Captain Gold’s granddaughter, Esther. During a lighthearted aside, Faulwell’s longtime partner, Anthony Mark, had made a good-natured remark to him, suggesting that maybe the two of them ought to get married. It had been so casual, so off-the-cuff, that Faulwell had simply brushed it aside with a bon mot and forgotten about it.
But now the moment—and the suggestion—weighed on his mind.
He snapped out of his reverie as they reached the lab door.
“Anyway,” Abramowitz finished, “we can finish this later.”
Faulwell stifled a derisive snort. Yes, I’m sure “we” will.
He followed her into the lab, which was abuzz with excited voices that concealed the humming of its walls of computers. Gathered around a large worktable were Gomez and Tev; tactical systems specialist Fabian Stevens, who was engaged in a spirited but hushed debate with the chief engineer, Lieutenant Nancy Conlon; and Haznedl, who was showing her tricorder’s display to Tev and Gomez while talking a rapid string of jargon that meant little or nothing to Faulwell.
It wasn’t difficult to understand what the excitement was about. On the table, hovering above a small metallic square whose four triangular side pieces were open and folded flat, was a planet that had been compressed to the size of a human head and cocooned in a flickering, golden stasis field. Turning toward Abramowitz, Faulwell muttered, “There’s something you don’t see every day.”
Gomez stuck her thumb and forefinger between her teeth and let loose a shrill, piercing whistle. The room fell quiet. “All right,” she said. “We’re all here, let’s get started.” Tilting her head toward the miniature planet, she said, “Our mission is to figure out how to get this box to release this planet, and to determine where and when we need to do so.”
Tev keyed a command sequence into his padd. A holographic star map appeared above the worktable. “The planet’s guardian has indicated that its destination is Mu Arae. A yellow-orange dwarf, spectral and luminosity type G3. Its high metallicity has resulted in an abundance of exploitable mineral resources in its asteroid belt. Because of the erratic orbit of one of its gaseous supergiants, no Class-M planets are known to exist in this system’s habitable zone.”
Before the deactivated holographic star map faded away, Conlon spoke up. “Multiple scans of the pyramid have proved inconclusive. Its metal—or whatever it is—is impervious to physical damage, so we’ve been unable to take samples or run tests. I can’t tell you much about the device itself except that its plates appear to be exactly three centimeters thick at their widest points, beveled on their edges, and covered on their exterior surface with raised m
arkings.”
Gomez nodded to Faulwell and Abramowitz. “That’s where you two come in. While we tinker with the hardware, we need you two to try and make heads or tails of those symbols.” She handed her tricorder to Faulwell. On its screen was a visual recording of the device in its closed configuration. Pointing to a marking near the object’s base, she said, “Araneus pressed this symbol to open the pyramid. We don’t know if the same one closes it. In fact, we don’t know what any of them do, and we can’t risk touching them until we know what they mean.”
Faulwell frowned. “Do we have any records of Araneus’s language, either spoken or written?”
Haznedl shook her head. “His ship exploded shortly after he was rescued by the crew of Varkala Station. The universal translator only picked up a smattering of his language so far. He spent most of his time on Varkala repeating himself.”
Leaning in for a close-up look, Stevens all but pressed his nose to one of the pyramid’s open sides. “No hinges or seams. Probably some kind of mnemonic polymer.”
Conlon nodded. “Remarkable, isn’t it? Better than ours, that’s for—”
“Let’s move on,” Gomez interrupted. “What about this stasis field? How’s it holding this planet in suspended animation? And how the hell do you compress an entire planet, anyway?”
“The shrinking part I can guess at,” Stevens said. “The Defiant ran into something like this a couple years ago—a subspace compression anomaly. Shrank a runabout down to the size of my finger.”
“I read about that,” Haznedl said. “But that was a natural phenomenon—this was done artificially.”
“Yeah,” Stevens said, dragging his fingers through his dark hair. “Gotta say, I’ve never seen anything like this—any of it.”
Strolling around the table, Conlon said, “As for the stasis field, Commander, the question isn’t so much, how did the Koas get their planet in there? It’s, how do they plan to get it out? There are so many values that would have to be restored: orbital distance and velocity, rotation and angular momentum, not to mention the quantum states of every living thing on the planet itself.”
