by David Mack
“And all with no moving parts,” Stevens quipped.
An arrogant harrumph preceded Tev’s retort. “Are you certain, Specialist? Can your eyes penetrate the box’s shell and confirm that its workings are entirely nonmoving? Or are you merely wasting our time with glib remarks?”
Before Faulwell could point out that Tev’s unnecessary rebuke was four times longer than Stevens’s remark—certainly a more egregious waste of time by any measure—Gomez said sharply, “That’s enough, Tev.” Glancing at Stevens, she added, in a gentler tone of voice, “Fabian, try to stay focused.” Faulwell suspected that Gomez had chided Stevens merely for the sake of preserving the dignity of her fellow officer.
Within minutes, the conversation devolved into a verbal maelstrom of technical jargon. All of it was far outside Faulwell’s area of expertise. Standing mutely beside him, Abramowitz seemed equally nonplussed by the engineers’ technobabble. He tapped her shoulder. “Want to get out of here?”
She rolled her eyes. “Please.”
Faulwell stepped beside Commander Gomez. “Commander, with your permission, Carol and I would like to continue our research elsewhere.”
Gomez nodded her approval. “Let me know the moment you find something.” He assured her that he would, then led Abramowitz back out into the corridor. For a few blissful moments, the only sound in the corridor was their footsteps.
As they reached the turbolift, Abramowitz spoke.
“Maybe I should give Vance something homemade,” she said as the doors swished open.
Stepping into the turbolift, Faulwell valiantly resisted the urge to suggest that she give her lover the gift of silence.
Unlike the serene slipstream voyage out from Arcturus, the high-warp voyage to Mu Arae was giving the da Vinci a thorough shaking. Captain Gold was in the midst of a double shift on the bridge while Gomez and Tev searched for the key to unlock the Koas homeworld from its…
He found himself at a loss for words when trying to describe the pyramid. Was it a vessel? A shelter? A disguise? Whatever its original designation might have been, without the key that would free Koa and restore it to new life in orbit around Mu Arae, only one descriptor now seemed appropriate: prison.
At least the conn officers’ tug-of-war is over, Gold mused. Ensign Rusconi had relieved Wong without a word passing between them, and the young woman now held the da Vinci steady as it hurtled back through Federation space at warp 9.6. While she worked, she chatted amiably with Ensign Saldok, an occasionally overeager but very reliable young Benzite man. He had just joined the da Vinci’s crew as its beta-shift operations officer during the ship’s recent stopover on Earth.
Gold was about to summon Corsi to the bridge, to take over command while he took a break for dinner, when a chirping alert sounded on the tactical console. “Captain,” said Ensign Joanne Piotrowski, “incoming signal from Varkala Station, priority one.”
“On-screen.”
The image of station commander Cody Mui appeared on the main viewer. He looked alarmed. “Captain Gold, the ship that attacked us has friends—big ones—and they’re moving fast, on a pursuit course for your ship.”
“Are your people all right?”
“We’re fine, sir. They went right past us.” He nodded to someone off-screen. “We’re sending you all the sensor data we could collect before they moved out of range.”
The captain’s posture stiffened. “Out of range? How long ago did you detect them?”
“Less than half an hour,” Mui said. “Like I said, they’re really moving. Had to be at least warp nine-
point-ninety-nine.”
Piotrowski chimed in, “Sir, I’m tracking forty-one unidentified vessels, on the farthest edge of sensor range. Closing at warp nine-point-nine-nine-four. They’ll overtake us in less than one hour.” A new signal beeped from her console. “Another incoming transmission, sir—from the pursuing fleet.”
Gold nodded to Mui. “Thanks for the heads-up, Commander. Gold out.”
As the screen blinked back to the warp-distorted starfield, the captain nodded to Piotrowski to patch in the next signal. He turned back toward the main viewer to see the image of a delicately featured humanoid man, attired in ornately tailored robes and sporting a meticulously coiffed crown of multichromatic hair. “Attention, alien vessel da Vinci,” he said. “I am Viceroy Narjam of the Silgov. Your vessel is carrying an artifact stolen from my people. We demand its immediate return.”
Narjam’s imperious demeanor rankled Gold. Even more important, something about his claim of ownership of the pyramid struck the captain as inherently suspect.
Hunching his shoulders and feigning ignorance, Gold replied, “An artifact? Like a crystal vase? Or a stone tablet?”
The viceroy bristled at the query. “It is a metal pyramid.”
“A solid metal pyramid?”
Despite all Narjam’s delicately symmetrical beauty, from his enormous almond-shaped eyes to his nigh-imperceptible nose, he looked ready to fracture from the stress of hiding his anger. “No,” he said. “It contains precious cargo.”
“Spice?” Gold taunted. “Frankincense? Myrrh?”
“A planet,” Narjam all but growled.
“Could you describe the planet?”
Narjam closed his eyes briefly, then opened them. They had changed color and were now a radiant crimson. “I will not discuss this with you further,” he said. “Halt your vessel and surrender the artifact to us—or we will take it from you by force.”
The channel blinked off, returning the elongated stars to the main viewer. Gold sighed and looked back at Piotrowski. “You know what to do.”
With a knowing grimace, she sounded the red-alert klaxon.
Chapter
3
Never one to sugarcoat her opinions, Corsi struggled to tread the very fine line between conscientious objection and outright insubordination. “Captain, we don’t even know which side is telling the truth,” the statuesque blond security chief said, pacing back and forth in front of Gold’s ready room desk. “Taking sides before we know what we’re getting into—”
“—is the hand we’ve been dealt,” Gold said. “We embarked on a humanitarian mission, and I intend to finish it.”
She stopped pacing. “But what if the Silgov are telling the truth? They claim the artifact is stolen property.”
The captain shook his head. “I gave them a chance to state their case. They responded with threats.”
Planting her fists accusingly on her hips like a scolding parent, she said, “The way I hear it, you provoked their viceroy pretty openly.”
Gold shrugged. “What can I say? I don’t care for people who begin a conversation with demands and threats.”
“All the same, sir, we might have just landed on the wrong side of a criminal matter.” She was briefly distracted by the tantalizing aroma of the mug of sweet-smelling java on the captain’s desk. Refocusing, she said, “In less than an hour, the Silgov fleet will be looking to force the issue. We need to know who’s lying to us before they get here.”
Nodding slowly, the captain said, “All right. Those are your orders, then.”
“Sir?”
“Find out which side we should believe.”
Frustration and annoyance flushed Corsi’s face with warmth. “Aye, sir….I presume we’ll continue to advance Araneus’s side of the matter until then?”
“Call it a hunch,” Gold said. “Given a choice between siding with a big fleet of pushy shlubs who snap orders at me, or a lone traveler who just lost his ship and is now entirely at our mercy…” He let his statement trail off, apparently confident that his meaning was clear.
Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Corsi said, “Point taken, Captain.”
He picked up his mug of steaming-hot coffee. “Dismissed.”
Rennan Konya found the sensations he detected in Araneus’s motor cortex fascinating, to say the least. Using a finely honed psionic talent known as proprioception, the trim
, angular-featured Betazoid security guard tapped into the unconscious mind of the semi-conscious Koas. Subtle pulses of pain mingled with fleeting flashes of reflex reaction to heat or contact. Despite the exotic origin of the enormous creature, Konya found its nervous system less alien to his telepathic sense than its physical appearance was to his eyes.
He sensed Dr. Lense much more easily, as she tried to step up quietly behind him. Compared to the delicate, hard-to-reach synaptic web of Araneus’s mind, Lense’s mind was like a clarion. “No change, Doctor,” Konya said, anticipating her question.
“So far, so good,” she said. “Let—”
“—you know if I detect any change,” he interrupted. “Will do.” He could feel the curt nod of her head even though he couldn’t see her. Proprioception was not nearly the same as having eyes in the back of one’s head, but for a trained practitioner it came very close. In hand-to-hand combat it gave him an almost imperceptible edge. However, as he had been more than happy to demonstrate to Dantas Falcão the past few nights, it was a skill that also could be put to more pleasurable uses.
Ire and aggression flooded Konya’s senses, affording him several seconds’ warning of Lieutenant Commander Corsi’s arrival. The doors parted with a soft pneumatic gasp, and the chief of security strode into sickbay with a look on her face that made clear she was in no mood to be trifled with. She stepped briskly between Konya and Araneus, then snapped at Lense, “Wake up your patient, Doctor. Now.”
Konya silently noted a tiny twitch in Araneus’s pincers.
Showing an inner fortitude that Konya couldn’t help but admire, Lense calmly looked back at Corsi and said, “No.”
Her answer brought Corsi up short. Corsi took a moment to recompose herself. “Doctor, this isn’t the time for an ethical debate. Your patient has information we need if we’re going to get out of this mess alive.”
“Forget it,” Lense said. “We’ve served together how long?”
“Awhile,” Corsi said.
“Right, awhile. And have I ever just ignored my professional ethics and done whatever you told me to do, just because you said it was an emergency?”
Corsi wore a glum expression. “Most of the time, actually.”
Even from across the room, Konya felt that Corsi had struck a nerve with her roommate the doctor, who waved her hands in a defensive, crossing gesture. “Well, not today,” she said. “I’m sick of it. Cite your emergencies, your regulations, your orders—I don’t care. I’m not reviving my patient prematurely just so you can harass him.”
Sickbay lay gripped in a tense hush. Konya sensed Dantas and Nurse Wetzel lurking in the adjacent lab, cramped together, anxious to stay clear of the two officers’ conversation. Empathy was not one of Konya’s principal talents, but the two women were broadcasting their shared emotion in powerful waves.
Tapping her foot, Corsi eyed the doctor suspiciously.
“You have no idea how to revive that thing, do you?”
“Not a clue,” Lense admitted, shoulders slumping.
“Tell me you’re kidding,” Corsi said, pacing inside a small zone of personal space. “How hard is it to diagnose a spider?”
“Corsi, the only thing Araneus has in common with spiders is general body shape and the number of limbs. Until I see its gene sequence, I’m not putting any meds into it.”
“Fair enough,” Corsi said. The security chief turned toward Konya. “Rennan, that thing you do—”
“You mean proprio—”
“Yeah, that,” she said. “Can you send as well as receive?”
“I’m not sure,” Konya said. “I have trouble sensing Araneus as it is. Sending a complex message would—”
“Nothing complex,” Corsi said. “Just wake him up.”
Shrugging his shoulders, he said, “Hang on. I’ll try.”
Reaching out with his psionic abilities, Konya projected a basic waking impulse into Araneus’s nervous system.
A piercing shriek, like the amplified cry of a wounded eagle, split the quiet hum of sickbay. Konya, Corsi, and Lense all reflexively covered their ears with their hands. Araneus thrashed across the biobeds, its multiple limbs extending and retracting, its head tentacles flailing. One leg cracked a computer display screen, while another flung a rolling cart of surgical tools across sickbay with a deafening crash.
Fighting to concentrate and focus his thoughts through the din, Konya pushed more thoughts into the mind of the frightened Koas: Calm…Safe…Calm…
Araneus’s panic subsided. Its enormous faceted eyes swiveled slightly. Certain that the Koas was awake and alert, Konya nodded slowly to Corsi.
She leaned carefully over Konya’s shoulder. Her tightly wound bun of hair was mere centimeters from his face. Speaking softly, she said, “Araneus, my name is Domenica Corsi. I’m the chief of security on this ship. I need to ask you some questions.”
Gurgling noises rattled deep inside the creature’s throat. Konya remained alert for any sign of renewed anxiety, but for now the Koas seemed at ease. “Ask,” it said, drawing out the word in a long breathy rasp.
“Did your people build the pyramid?”
A very long pause followed. Then the weak Koas said in a thin whisper, “Old ones.”
Corsi arched an eyebrow at Konya, as if she expected him to elaborate on Araneus’s cryptic answer. The Betazoid guard shrugged and shook his head.
Clearly frustrated, Corsi soldiered on. “The Silgov accuse you of stealing the pyramid from them. They claim it’s their artifact.”
This time Araneus tensed. Its pedipalps quivered. Drawing its huge limbs inward, it raised its body off the biobeds and the supplemental gurneys toward the ceiling of sickbay, all the while emitting an angry growl that rose steadily in volume.
Konya felt the crash coming. “Doctor! It’s suffering some kind of seizure!”
Lense rushed forward, and Falcão and Wetzel entered swiftly from the lab to assist her. All three women froze as they watched Araneus’s limbs tremble and give out. Its dense, ponderous bulk slammed back down onto the biobeds. As the echo of the impact faded, Konya heard a distinct cracking of polymer from one of the beds’ foundations.
Singsong oscillations from overlapping medical tricorders filled sickbay. The sound was almost enough to drown out Corsi’s darkly resigned sigh.
“Well,” Konya said. “That was fun.”
“I’ll go see if the engineers learned anything from the pyramid,” Corsi said, then turned toward the door. “If you need me, I’ll be in the lab.”
Tev took an apple rancher candy from his pants pocket and untwisted the coiled ends of its wrapper. The brittle crinkle of the unfolding paper was all but inaudible in the busy lab. No one seemed to be paying attention as he placed the tart, hard confection inside his mouth, but when he glanced to his right, he noticed Fabian Stevens looking askance at him.
In a conspiratorial tone, Stevens said, “Whatcha got there?”
“An apple rancher candy,” Tev said.
“Where’d you get it?”
Irritated at being interrogated by an enlisted man, Tev said simply, “From Bartholomew.”
The engineer made a small sound of acknowledgment, gave a small nod, then continued, “Got any more?”
“Yes,” Tev said. “I do.” He hoped that the human would not ask for one of his candies. Refusing such a request would likely be perceived by Stevens as a slight.
Stevens stared at Tev for several seconds, as if expecting some further statement. His suspicious manner verged on the impertinent, in Tev’s opinion. Finally, he broke eye contact without saying anything more.
Thank goodness he did not ask for a candy, Tev thought with relief. That might have become awkward.
Tuning out the chatter of his colleagues in the close quarters of the lab, Tev studied the readings from his tricorder. He was convinced that the Koas pyramid had compressed the planet by enveloping it in a complex series of nested subspace shells. Though the energy fields that surrounded the
shrunken planet had showed no signs of instability in repeated scans, Tev was curious to see whether he could cause a controlled disruption of the containment mechanism. If the code to deactivate the device eludes Bartholomew, he reasoned, it would be wise to have another means of releasing the planet from its confinement. At the very least, it would provide me with data to measure against the baseline.
He stepped over to a companel on the wall and began to initiate a low-power bombardment of tetryons toward the Koas containment shell. While he worked, Gomez and Conlon cycled through another series of passive scans that he had already told them would be ineffectual in discerning the device’s true workings. The first officer’s unwillingness to accept his professional expertise—to say nothing of Conlon’s outright hostility to his recommendations for improving the efficiency of the warp and impulse systems she maintained—baffled him. It was as if they preferred to settle for inferior results.
Seeing that the tetryon pulse was charged, he primed an array of active sensors to probe the inner subspace shells. Satisfied that all was ready, he triggered the tetryon pulse. Instantly, the data from the compression fields changed.
From behind him, Conlon yelled, “The planet’s expanding!”
Tev turned and saw that the shimmering cocoon of energy around the planet now swirled with activity. Conlon, Gomez, Stevens, and Haznedl all took half a step back from the planet while keeping their attention on their tricorder screens. “It just enlarged by .0014 percent,” Gomez said.
Haznedl added, “Current rate of expansion, if steady, will be sixteen percent per hour.” Tev turned back to his companel and decided that he had collected enough data. As he terminated the tetryon pulse, Haznedl continued, “If we don’t contain it—” She looked down at her tricorder, her face a portrait of confusion. “It stopped. The compression field is reasserting itself.”
