Orphans

by Kevin Killiany

  His senses heightened by stress, he noted the air lacked the scents of a living ship. Shifting his eyes but not his head, he saw an overabundance of ventilation fixtures, though he felt no breeze. His fingers drummed idly on the hilt of his Master’s dagger as he calculated the volume of air they must be moving.

  Behind him Langk cursed. Kairn turned to see the warrior staring, his hand on the hilt of the d’k tahg at his hip. A huge blue arachnid stood on the threshold of a cross corridor. However, Kairn noted that a Starfleet communicator was attached to the apparition’s upper body. The beast must be a member of the crew.

  “I have heard of Nasats,” Kortag’s voice carried from behind him. He and Captain Gold had also turned at the sound of Langk’s curse.

  “Pleased to meet you, too,” said the creature in a voice like crystalline bells.

  “This is P8 Blue,” Commander Gomez introduced.“She’s our structural engineering specialist.”

  Langk compensated for his first reaction by nodding to Pattie as an equal. Every now and then he surprised Kairn into thinking there might be hope for him.

  The Nasat mirrored the nod solemnly, curling its— her—antenna nearest the humans. As the group resumed its way to the observation lounge, she fell in beside Kairn.

  “What do you make of the energy source?” she asked conversationally.

  “Energy source?”

  “Large source of radiant energy.” She took his obtuse question in stride. “Appears just below the forward hull every seventeen or so hours, then seems to fade.”

  Kairn considered for a step. Much of this was to be discussed openly in a few moments, so there was no point in secrecy on this issue.

  “An apparent artificial sun,” he said neutrally. “It takes just over eight point five standard hours to traverse the interior of the vessel from bow to stern.”

  “I was afraid of that.” P8 Blue made a sound like a breeze through copper wind chimes. “A seventeen-hour day will play hell with our sleep cycles and won’t convert easily at all to standard time. We’re going to spend a lot of energy wondering what time it is.”

  Kairn was still considering whether this was Nasat humor when they entered the observation lounge.

  There were a half-dozen other Federation personnel already there, standing to greet the visitors, but Kairn barely registered their presence. His attention was completely captured by the huge windows. He doubted there was that much transparent aluminum aboard the Qaw’qay’. How complex must their structural integrity field parameters be to compensate?

  Kairn did not consider the effect of using his dagger until it registered that the Federation engineers were suddenly silent. He’d meant to work quickly while they were distracted with being presented to Kortag, but the glint of his blade extended before him had drawn every eye in the room. He slowly lowered his hand until the blade was flat across his stomach.

  Langk snorted derisively. Kairn saw Kortag’s hand move, perhaps a centimeter, enough to silence the young warrior. He thought he saw a faint glint of amusement in his captain’s eye, but no help. It was his blunder to deal with alone.

  The Federation structural engineer saved him from having to speak.

  “May I?” she asked, extending one of her hands.

  Kairn paused. One did not surrender one’s dagger lightly. On the other hand, one did not wave a blade—even a Master’s dagger—in another’s house without explanation. He offered it to her hilt first.

  The Nasat peered closely at the dagger for several seconds, turning it over several times as she studied the blade. The other engineers seemed content to wait as she made her examination, Kairn noted. Professionals waited for information before they acted. He hoped Langk was taking notes.

  Kairn knew P8 Blue had deduced the dagger’s purpose when she extended her arm and began waving the blade experimentally before her. She laughed, a delightful tinkle of glass.

  Turning from the window, she extended the dagger toward a stocky officer near her captain. Kairn realized he was more powerfully built than a human, with a commanding, aggressive mien: a Tellarite.

  “Commander Tev, you are—” She stopped herself.

  “No, that can’t be right.” She considered the blade a moment. “Of course,” she turned to Kairn. “This is made to your dimensions.”

  “Every Master Craftsman fashions his own,” he said neutrally.

  She peered at the edge, turning it so the etchings along the flat of the blade caught the light.

  “My Klingon is not good, but this is a scale, and these conversion factors, while this ”—she flipped the dagger and sighted at an angle along the opposite side of the same edge—“handles proportion and ratios.”

  She looked around the lounge at her teammates and seemed to realize she’d lost them.

  “It’s a measuring tool,” she said. “Depending on which edge he uses and what angle he holds it at, Kairn could use this to tell you how many square centimeters of fabric are in your uniform or the displacement of the da Vinci. ”

  She reversed the blade, offering Kairn the hilt.

  “Before we part company,” she said, “would you instruct me on fashioning one of my own?”

  Kairn’s hand hesitated midmotion. He knew Captain Kortag’s heart; there was little chance the two ships would part on friendly terms. He lacked the guile to smile as he retook his dagger.

  Commander Gomez presented the remaining Federation engineers, introducing four more humans, a lone Bynar, and the Tellarite. Though Kairn did not retain names, he was impressed by the range of specialties included. What role would a cultural specialist or a physician play in engineering? This team was obviously intended to deal with a wide range of situations without support.

  He introduced himself and Langk when she finished. Captain Kortag had already identified himself to the only person aboard the Federation vessel who mattered.

  The courtesies attended to, Kortag took the proffered seat, identical to the Federation captain’s facing him from the opposite end of the table. Langk and Kairn sat at either side of him as Gomez and the Tellarite flanked their own captain.

  In Federation fashion the others attempted to leave the visitors enough space, crowding toward their end of the table. However, even with their security chief standing by the door, there simply was not enough room for formal separation. Kairn found himself elbow to elbow with the Nasat, which, he decided, he did not mind at all.

  For the next forty minutes the technical data flowed freely. The Federation engineers had done a thorough job of modeling the alien vessel. They had missed the entry ports, but their deep scans revealed much of the structure that had eluded the Qaw’qay’.

  Even Langk was not immune to the spirit of cooperation, questioning the Tellarite’s assessment of some detail, then conceding the point. Kairn could not remember the last time that had happened.

  Kairn found himself comparing the two captains. Both followed the multiple conversations with evident interest and comprehension, but offered no comments of their own. Clearly each was comfortable with letting the specialists under their command work in their own way. The two looked to be of an age, but he knew nothing of how human longevity compared to that of Klingons. For all he knew, Captain Gold was twice as old as Captain Kortag, or had only half his years.

  When his captain shifted slightly in his chair, Kairn knew the period of conviviality was about to end. Langk realized it, too, straightening in his seat and resuming his imperious warrior’s air. The others, of course, noticed nothing.

  “Have you determined their point of origin?” Kortag demanded.

  “No,” the Tellarite, whose name, Kairn recalled, was Tev, said shortly.

  “No,” Kortag echoed, and waited.

  Kairn knew his captain understood why they had been unable to discover the colony ship’s home system. He wondered whether Kortag thought the Federation was withholding information or simply using the issue as a pretext for confrontation. Both seemed likely.


  “From its current heading, we know the vessel passed through the Dancido system about six hundred years ago,” the Tellarite said. “Where it was attacked, apparently over a protracted period of time, by the Dancidii.”

  “Six hundred years ago?” asked the smallest human female. The cultural specialist, if Kairn recalled correctly. “That was during the Dancidii unification. They hardly had space flight then. Their armament would have been—”

  “Primitive nuclear missiles,” Tev finished.

  The image of the colony vessel on the viewscreen rotated, shifting from a schematic diagram to a graphic representation. Centered in the screen was a ragged trench about a third of the way back from the leading edge of the cylinder. Kilometers wide, it formed an uneven collar ringing half the ship’s circumference. Several craters of various sizes were grouped around the trench.

  “There was apparently a structure here which the Dancidii took to be the control center,” Tev said. “It was the target of at least fifty low-yield nuclear warheads.”

  Kairn knew from their analysis of the rotational rocket control network, something invisible to the Starfleeters’ distant scans, that the Dancidii had been right. He did not need to look to his captain for guidance; he knew to school his face to remain blank. This was information they would not share.

  “A navigational array would make sense,” Gomez was saying. “The ship’s rotation would provide continuous triangulation.”

  “That’s a lot of firepower for a fledgling space force to deliver,” the black-haired male—tactical systems specialist?—observed. “I wonder if this ship was the common threat that unified the Dancidii.”

  Tev shrugged, dismissing the speculation. “Either their impacts turned the vessel or the crew attempted evasive maneuvers. In either case the ship’s course was altered. Extrapolating from the age of the ship and its limited maneuverability renders eight possible points of origin, all beyond the range of Federation exploration.”

  Kortag grunted. Clearly not satisfied, but resigned to accepting the Federation’s limitations.

  “You will download these speculations and all of your hard data to memory crystal,” he ordered, rising. Kairn and Langk rose with him. “We will collect it in four hours. The Empire will remember your efforts.”

  He strode toward the door. For a heartbeat, Kairn thought the security chief was going to block their way. But responding to either an unseen signal or her own judgment, she moved well clear of their path.

  “Explain yourself.” The human captain’s voice, speaking again in Klingon, caught them just as the automatic door opened.

  Kortag paused just within the room. “It is a Klingon problem.” He stated the obvious without turning. “Klingons will deal with it.”

  “The ship is in Federation space,” Captain Gold pointed out. “And will be for eight more days.”

  “Your Federation asked us to come.”

  “To work with us,” Gold said. “This is a joint mission.”

  Kortag gave no sign he heard the words, much less granted their validity. He stepped forward.

  “Our intent is to save the thousands of beings aboard that vessel,” Gold stated flatly. “You are welcome to either help us do that or get the hell out of Federation space.”

  The human’s voice lacked Klingon heat, but so did a knife blade.

  Kortag whirled at the threshold, his eyes blazing. Langk and Kairn stepped clear, but their captain didn’t charge. Instead he stalked back to stand behind his chair at the head of the table.

  “The Klingon Empire does not exterminate helpless peoples,” he growled; his raised hand forestalled response. “Do not insult me by denying your insinuation.”

  “Your choice, sir,” Captain Gold said in the same flat tone. “Do you go or stay?”

  Kortag swept the Federation engineers with his glare, coming at last to the Starfleet captain.

  “We have a common goal,” he said at last. “What do you propose?”

  CHAPTER

  9

  Three fours of days before the Quest

  I ’ve done this before,Fabian Stevens told himself as he watched the giant cylinder rising under his feet. This is no different from landing on the Plat.

  On the other hand, the Kursican Incarceration Platform had been spinning in orbit, not streaking through deep space at some ungodly fraction of the speed of light. And he had approached it, not hung in front of it like a Lilliputian matador taunting a planetsized bull. Well, maybe hung was not the right word. He—along with Kairn, Tev, Soloman, Carol Abramowitz, Pattie, and Lauoc—had been beamed into space directly in front of the colony ship moving at exactly the same speed. The plan was to slow down just enough to soft-land.

  Stevens found it hard to brake; far too easy to imagine himself smashed to a monomolecular film on the spinning surface. Forcing the remarkably vivid mental image aside, he focused on aligning his flight with the garish, eight-pointed star that had been beamed to the center of the twelve-kilometers-wide plain of metal.

  The visual target was intended to provide both orientation and a sense of scale to help them judge their descent. For Stevens the kaleidoscopic effect also added motion sickness, but now did not seem like a good time to bring that up.

  Stevens cringed at his own unconscious pun.

  Kairn seemed to have no qualms about colliding with the gigantic ship. Stevens could see the coal black Klingon environmental suit “below” him and to his left, plummeting with apparent disregard for danger.

  Tev’s white Starfleet suit, stockier than the usual cut, was perhaps a heartbeat behind. Stevens was glad to see the others—including Lauoc—matching his cautious approach. At least some of the away team was sane.

  Lauoc Soan was their security contingent. Stevens didn’t know him well, but he was glad the Bajoran was along. Not that he was concerned about any possible danger from the colonists—or would they be “natives” on a ship so large? Tev was already showing signs of not adjusting well to being under Kairn’s command. The two might need a referee and he wasn’t up to it.

  Domenica had wanted three security officers on the mission: herself, Lauoc, and Rennan Konya. The Klingon captain had rejected Konya out of hand; he didn’t want a Betazoid “mind reader” near his officers. Nor had he liked the idea of a security officer who outranked the mission leader being along.

  But Lauoc, chin high on most people and muscled like a piece of beef jerky, had impressed the old Klingon. Part of it had been the web of scars from a Breen neural whip rising from his collar to just below his left eye, and a lot of it had been that Lauoc had served on the Abraxas, but it was the way he didn’t blink when Langk had threatened him that earned him the nod.

  In fact, when the big lieutenant had scoffed at the idea of a Federation runt coming along to protect him, Kortag had surprised the hell out of everybody by pulling him from the mission. The warrior had started to puff up in protest, but the look in his captain’s eye had deflated him pronto. Stevens had the impression he’d be scrubbing induction coils by hand for the foreseeable future.

  The second surprise had been Kairn’s tapping Pattie instead of one of his own to fill the vacancy. Except for that big guy, these Klingons were not running true to type.

  With a start, Stevens realized he had daydreamed his way to within a hundred meters above the spinning nose of the giant ship. Wouldn’t do to meet oblivion mid-musing. He tapped his nav boosters lightly, slowing his rate of approach a bit.

  The rotation was slowest at the center, but it was still enough to send Stevens stumbling as he touched down. He noted only Pattie and Lauoc seemed oblivious to the spin. In fact, the Bajoran seemed to land mid-stride on his way to the center of the target. With a few quick motions he erected the homing beacon.

  “Da Vinci to away team.” Shabalala’s voice crackled in his helmet.

  It should not have crackled at this range. Instinctively Stevens looked for the da Vinci, but quickly looked down. The spinning canopy of sta
rs was impossible to look at. He made a mental note to keep his eyes on the ground as much as possible.

  Hull,he reminded himself, not ground. Though it was hard to think of a surface a dozen kilometers across as anything but the ground. It was a dark gray-blue he noticed, now that he was looking at it, and pebbled, with wide, feathery arcs of light gray and white.

  “Boarding party here,”Kairn said.

  “You’re about four kilometers from the entrance,”Shabalala said. “Bearing one four seven.”

  The bearing was of course relative to the homing beacon. The spinning surface made any objective reference system irrelevant.

  Without a word, Kairn strode in the indicated direction, clearly expecting the others to follow.

  One thing about Klingon leadership,Stevens thought, they don’t micromanage.

  Abramowitz exclaimed suddenly.

  “Problem?”Tev demanded.

  “Footprints,”she said with a shaky laugh. “But they’re ours. I thought the gray was part of the hull material, but it’s dust.”

  “Micrometeorite debris, held to the surface by the vessel’s forward motion,”Pattie said. “The spiral drifts are caused by its rotation.”

  “Restrict transmissions to mission specific information.”With that, Tev ended the conversation.

  Tellarites, on the other hand…Stevens did not complete the thought.

  For the next twenty minutes he heard nothing except his own breathing and the almost subliminal whine and clank of his suit’s magnetic servos as the away team trooped across the metal plain. At first he divided his attention between watching where he put his feet and the directional readout, but that quickly paled.

  These things should come with libraries,he thought. Then, being an engineer:Okay, wise guy, where would you put it?

  He began running a diagnostic, more an inventory than anything else. These suits were so well thought out, finding space for a library without redesigning…