by Dayton Ward
“Improbable, given what Anadac told us.” Sarek continued to stare at the odd light show in the sky. “A more likely explanation is that the generator has been activated by someone in our universe.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Are you hearing a ringing in your ears too?”
The ambassador replied, “Yes. Given the acuity of Vulcan hearing, I am quite sensitive to the effects. It is not at all a desirable feeling.”
Another abrupt wave of nausea caught Una off guard and made her double over in pain. At the same time and without warning, her head began pounding from the onset of an extreme headache. What was causing this? The sensation, while somewhat comparable to her previous experiences, was still quite different and much more distressing. Further, while the nausea seemed to come and go, now the pain in her head was lingering just like the ringing that continued unabated in her ears. She focused her thoughts on willing away the dull ache behind her eyes, but it was a futile attempt.
Her own distress was interrupted by the sounds of screams coming from behind her, and Una jerked herself around to see the various Usildar. All of them were consumed by frenetic motion, leaping and screeching as they turned upon each other with unchecked aggression. Punches and kicks, bites and slashes with weapons, wrestling each other to the ground.
“What are they doing?” asked Joanna. “It’s like somebody flipped a switch or something.”
Una held out a hand, signaling caution. “Stay back. Don’t try to stop them.”
“Klingons!”
Both women flinched at the sudden cry of rage from behind them, and were startled to see Raul Martinez rushing past them and heading for the Usildar melee.
“Commander!” shouted Shimizu. His face an expression of shock and confusion, he asked, “What the hell is he on about? Klingons? There are no Klingons down there.”
Ignoring the shouts to stop or turn around, Martinez charged forward, running headlong into the impromptu fight. He slammed into the nearest Usildar, knocking the gangly being to the ground. Not waiting, the commander found and advanced on another would-be enemy, throwing kicks and punches. Within seconds, two of the Usildar had grabbed his arms and pushed him to the ground, where they commenced to pummel him.
“No!” Joanna started forward, halted only when Una grabbed her right arm. The nurse struggled to break free. Una, her headache increasing with each passing moment, pulled on Joanna’s arm with sufficient force to yank the other woman off balance.
“Wait,” Una said. “We can’t just go running down there. We don’t know what’s causing all of this.”
Joanna tried once more to free her arm. “We have to help him!”
As though reacting to the scene below it, the blue sky began to darken, the strands of colored energy now standing out with even greater intensity. This was accompanied by a maniacal, piercing scream from Ensign La May, who turned on Shimizu and slammed into him, sending them both to the ground. She was faster rolling to her feet, but Shimizu, still on his knees, was able to grab her lower legs and pull her back down.
“Ensign!” shouted Una. “Stand down. That’s an order!”
Instead of replying, Shimizu regained his feet. Even as Le May was pushing herself off the ground, he drew from underneath his tunic the phaser Una had given him. Le May had only an instant to register surprise at the sight of the weapon before Shimizu fired at point blank range. The phaser beam washed over her, and her body was trapped within it for a moment before going limp and collapsing to the ground.
Shimizu was searching for someone or something to shoot when Una, her skull pounding from the incessant headache, tackled him. They tumbled to the ground, and she knocked the phaser from his hand. Instinct made her close a fist and swing it at Shimizu’s jaw, snapping back the ensign’s head. She felt his body relax beneath her as his eyes closed.
“Terra’s dead,” said Joanna, and Una rolled away from Shimizu to see the nurse kneeling beside Le May’s unmoving form. Then movement in Una’s peripheral vision made her lurch to her left in time to see Ensign Cheryl Stevens dashing forward to scoop up Shimizu’s dropped phaser. No sooner did her hand close around the weapon than she was firing indiscriminately into the handful of Usildar who were still on their feet. One after another, those targeted by the phaser beam fell to the ground.
“Stevens! No!”
How was this possible? How was it that Shimizu and Joanna had experienced initial difficulty upon being handed one of the phasers Una conjured, but Stevens had adapted with no trouble? It made no sense, but at the moment neither did anything else.
Her mind all but clouded by unending torrents of pain, Una lunged toward the ensign, who was continuing to fire at the now scattering Usildar. Focusing her tortured thoughts on the eruptions of energy from Stevens’s phaser, Una pushed the weapon out of her mind. An instant later it also vanished from the ensign’s hand, dissolved from existence.
“Traitor!”
Somehow comprehending that it was Una who had disarmed her, Stevens turned on the captain and ran toward her. Una was not ready for the attack and took the strike’s full force, which sent her stumbling backward until she tripped and fell. Una rolled over and tried scrambling to her feet, but by then she felt Stevens at her back, the ensign’s arm around her throat and a hand pressing against the side of her head. Within seconds Una felt herself on the verge of blacking out as Stevens applied force to the sleeper hold. She coughed and sputtered, the throbbing in her mind only growing as blackness began creeping into the edges of her vision.
Then the hold loosened, and the arm dropped from her throat. Sagging forward until she caught herself with one hand, Una turned and saw Stevens being lowered to the ground by Sarek, whose right hand rested on the junction between the ensign’s neck and shoulder.
“Thank you,” Una said, coughing between the words. Still kneeling on the ground and supported by one hand, she wiped her mouth before pushing herself to her feet. “What the hell is happening?”
The Vulcan replied, “I do not know. My initial hypothesis is that we are all somehow engaged in a most painful mass hallucination.”
“Are you affected too?”
“Quite.” The ambassador seemed to look into space for a moment before adding, “I just concluded a conversation with my father and my grandmother.”
Frowning, Una said, “But it wasn’t something that moved you to violence?”
Sarek shook his head. “No. I do not claim to understand it, though I suspect that my greater mental control and discipline has imparted an advantage to me in this regard as well.” The ambassador seemed ready to say something else, but then paused as though in midthought. His gaze turned toward the maelstrom of energy strands illuminating the sky.
Una did not even have time to process this notion before a new cry of anguish greeted them. Both she and Sarek looked for the source and found Joanna still kneeling next to the fallen Ensign Le May. Tears streamed down the young woman’s cheeks.
“Dad! You can’t die now! You can’t leave me all alone. Dad!”
Looking to Sarek, she saw that he was still mesmerized by filaments writhing in the sky. “Sarek? Ambassador? Are you all right?”
He lowered his gaze until it fell upon her. “Fascinating. I . . . seem to have seen some new things.”
“What does that mean?” Una gestured to Joanna and the others from their group who were still moving about the area. “What do we do?”
Sarek replied, “We must push past the boundaries of this perceived reality, Captain. It is our only hope to leave this place. So long as we remain trapped within this fiction, we are lost, and no one may ever find us.”
Her brow knitting in confusion, Una said, “What are you talking about? What things have you seen? How did you see them?”
“I cannot explain,” replied the Vulcan, “for I do not possess the correct answers. I must seek to und
erstand those answers before I can do anything more for us.”
Now hopelessly confused, Una winced against a new onslaught of pain beneath her temples. “I don’t understand. You’re leaving? Where are you going?”
Shaking his head, Sarek said, “I honestly do not know. All I am able to convey is that I must focus on leaving this place. I believe that is the only way to understand how we might return to our own universe.”
“But how do you know this?” A sudden thought occurred to Una. “Is someone or something communicating with you?”
Sarek seemed to consider the question for a moment before replying, “I am not sure. I suspect I will soon know, and once I do, I will share it with you.” He closed his eyes as though attempting a meditative trance. As Una looked on, dumbfounded, the Vulcan ambassador slowly faded from sight.
“Wait! What am I supposed to do?”
Una shouted the words, first to the spot where Sarek had been standing, and then to the sky with mounting fury, only to see the incandescent light show continuing to unspool with all fervor. The strands seem to pulse with the unrelenting pain behind her eyes. Were the two somehow connected? In this place, Una was finding it increasingly hard to be surprised by anything.
“Number One.”
The voice was behind her, but when Una turned she saw only the bodies of her shipmates, along with the fallen Usildar. Beyond them, standing at the first of the trees marking the dense forest that was the way she and her companions had come, was a lone figure. A human male, he was dressed in an older, obsolete Starfleet uniform with gold tunic and dark trousers and boots. Completing the ensemble was a fitted, gunmetal-gray field jacket. He stood looking at her and waiting.
“Captain Pike.”
Gone was the scarring of his face that was a consequence of his accidental exposure to delta radiation. His thinning hair, which had turned almost stark white from that same incident, was now rich and black with just a hint of gray at the temples, the way he had looked well over a decade ago when she had served with him on the Enterprise. His entire form was enveloped in a gleaming aura.
“It’s good to see you again,” said what by all evidence appeared to be Christopher Pike, her former commanding officer. “You’re seeing me because I’m apparently a deep-seated thought, one that comes to you during times of stress.” He looked around before returning his gaze to her. “You know you can leave this place if you want. Just like Sarek did.”
“I can’t just leave,” replied Una. She glanced to the bodies of her fallen comrades. “I can’t leave them. Not again.”
Pike—or his representation, at least—regarded her. “They’re gone. They’re all gone. You don’t owe them anything anymore.”
“That’s not true.” Wincing at renewed pain beneath her temples, Una shook her head. “I have to find out what happened to them. I need to learn the entire truth, but I can’t trust what I see here.”
“Do you trust me, Number One?”
As the pain in her head reached its worst level, she felt a tear fall from the corner of her eye. “I don’t know, Captain. I just don’t know. I don’t know what to think about anything here.”
“You will.”
When Pike or whatever he was smiled again, he opened his mouth not to speak, but instead to emit a steady, shrill electronic tone. It immediately began burrowing into her body and mind, and within a moment Una was overcome by a sudden urge to leave this place, to follow after Sarek and perhaps find the answers to all their questions.
I just have to trust him and trust my own mind. Can I do that?
An abrupt weakness seized her body, and Una felt her muscles relaxing as she fell backward to the ground. Still consumed by the near-debilitating pain in her head, she nevertheless felt sleepiness beginning to work its way into her psyche. Looking up, all she saw was dark sky illuminated by the odd, chaotic points of streaking light. Her last waking thoughts were of her former captain and mentor, and Sarek, who perhaps held the key to the answers they sought.
I have to find him.
Una tried not to flinch when the darkness above seemed to drop down upon her, pushing away everything else until nothing remained but the black.
Nineteen
Pavel Chekov was sure he could feel his brain turning to mush.
“I know I’ve only been looking at this for ten minutes,” he said, “but it feels like I’ve been here for hours.”
Alone in the Enterprise’s astrophysics lab—at least for the moment—Chekov pushed away from his console and leaned back in his chair. Raising his arms, he reached above his head and relished the stretching of the muscles in his lower back. He rotated his arms to work the kinks from his shoulders, and made a note to ask the ship’s quartermaster about more comfortable workstation chairs.
With a small grunt of resignation, Chekov returned to the sensor viewer mounted to his console. Now that the probe had ceased transmitting data as it prioritized its limited remaining power reserves, and the ship’s computer was continuing to process the information it already had received, Lieutenant Uhura had returned to station on the bridge. This allowed her to resume her normal duties while continuing to assist Mister Spock with decoding the communications being received from the probe. Meanwhile, Chekov’s own duties remained focused on the operation of the device. It already felt like an endless cycle: observe, classify, sort, then feed the larger aggregates of data to Spock and Uhura, who would actually analyze the information. Chekov knew he was doing important work, but he could not help thinking it was a step down from the responsibilities he had had in creating the very device responsible for collecting all of this new data in the first place.
Some creator. The first piece of genuinely innovative equipment I create ends up banished irretrievably into who knows where.
“Ensign, do you have an updated systems status report?”
It took Chekov a moment to realize that it was the second time he had heard the question. With a start, he turned from his console to see Spock standing before him. Spock’s hands were clasped behind his back, regarding him with his usual stoic expression. How long had the first officer been standing there? Chekov felt blood rushing to his cheeks. Had he done something stupid, like fall asleep at his station? A quick glance to his console’s chronometer told him that could not be possible. So he had merely been daydreaming when his superior officer wandered into the lab. Perfect.
“I’m sorry, Mister Spock. I was . . . lost in thought.” Taking a moment to consult the sensor readings, he said, “Backup battery power’s continuing to drain and is now at five percent. I estimate total shutdown with reserves exhausted within ten minutes.”
“Thank you.” As he returned to the workstation at the rear of the room, Spock asked, “Ensign, based on the process we have been required to employ to collect the probe’s data, have you drawn any conclusions about the other universe?”
Frowning, Chekov replied, “I’m not sure I understand, sir.”
“I am asking if you had deduced any differences between our universe and the Jatohr’s, based on the nature of how we are forced to collect the probe’s sensor information.”
Chekov considered the question. “Well, there’s the use of gamma radiation to carry the data from the other universe to us. That itself is rather unusual.”
After spending a moment in silence studying the status indicators and display monitors at his own station, Spock turned and moved back to Chekov’s console. “There is something else to consider. I must admit that I did not notice it at first, as Lieutenant Uhura and I were immersed in our monitoring of the computer’s deciphering of the probe data.” Stepping closer to Chekov’s station, he entered a series of commands, in response to which another of the monitors began to display a new stream of telemetry.
“This reading should show us the probe’s relative distance from the Enterprise,” he said. “You will note that th
ere appears to be no variance in that distance, even though our relative position has not remained constant due to our orbit around the planet.”
It took Chekov a moment to realize what the first officer was saying. “It’s as if the probe is keeping station with us. How can that be?”
“I do not know, Ensign. I would expect such measurements to be all but meaningless, except for one thing.” Spock entered another command string and the sensor data shifted. “These readings indicate life signs detected by the probe.”
As this was the first time he had seen the probe’s scan data converted from the original format, Chekov found himself leaning closer to the screen. “Jatohr life signs, of course, but also human, Klingon, and Vulcan?”
“Correct,” Spock replied. “The readings are indistinct, but still identifiable, and each carries with it an interesting quality. Do you see it?”
Feeling put on the spot as he studied the sensor readings, Chekov realized he was being tested by the science officer, or perhaps Spock was formulating a hypothesis of his own and was using this conversation to test it.
Is he trying to get me to poke a hole in his theory?
“At first,” Chekov offered, “the data suggests that the other universe might occupy the same space as our own, but on another dimensional plane.” That alone was enough to make his head hurt. “Can we even prove something like that with the data we have?”
“I am not prepared to make such a claim without more data and research,” replied Spock. “However, the evidence we have does suggest that the other universe likely follows a different set of physical definitions that are presently beyond our ability to understand. However, we have at least surmised that the probe was likely transported to the same realm as Sarek and everyone else affected by the Transfer Key. Further, it would seem that anyone transitioned from our universe is deposited in the same relative location within the other universe, regardless of their origin point in our universe. This is fortunate, as it should considerably narrow our search efforts.”
