Not that Bryce noticed. He was his typical, garrulous self, and as they approached the construct—the easiest landmark and most obvious rendezvous point for their team—he chattered away about any number of trivial matters.
“I swear half of my department has already checked out for the next two weeks. Senigg tried to turn in an end-of-shift report from three days ago, and when I called him on it he admitted he was distracted by trying to figure out what to pack for his downtime on the planet.”
How can someone who seems like the most open of books stir so many questions? Icheb wondered.
The first question, of course, was, Why am I here? Bryce and Lieutenants Elkins and Benoit were their respective ship’s chief engineers. The focus of their efforts for the next five days would be to attempt to locate and understand the technology that generated the biodomes sustaining what life existed on DK-1116. Each of them could probably have completed this work on their own. As a team they would definitely make short work of the problem.
While Icheb knew he had already begun to distinguish himself among his peers, and circumstance had placed him in Bryce’s path quite often, there were still dozens of engineers in the fleet who deserved the chance to participate in this mission with the fleet’s chiefs more than Icheb did. And yet, Commander Paris had advised him that Icheb had been personally requested by Bryce for this team.
Why?
Icheb was good. But no one was that good. Were they?
Their biodome’s construct was similar to the others present, although quite a bit larger. One of the tallest of the alien artifacts that had first attracted Seven’s attention to this planet burst forth from the overgrowth and rose almost fifty meters in the air. Near its midpoint, it curved in a delicate arch toward the east. Its base was all but buried in dense clusters of wide bluish-black leaves, but his tricorder calculated that it was several meters in diameter. The plaited pattern of the metal was significantly smaller and tighter at the base but seemed to expand as it climbed upward.
“If it were made of anything other than metal, I’d say it grew like this and maybe the energy of the field above it dictated its curvature,” Bryce offered as they paused in a relative clearing less than a dozen meters from the base.
“That does not seem likely,” Icheb observed as he studied his tricorder intently, wishing only to hide himself and his thoughts from Bryce, which was absurd. Until he had learned of Bryce’s request to add Icheb to the team of chief engineers, Icheb had never felt anything but perfect ease in Bryce’s company. Phinn’s display of confidence in his abilities and a desire for Icheb’s contributions to their team should have, if anything, increased his comfort. But it didn’t. And that made no sense.
“I’m not detecting any traces of the field generators or the Sevenofninonium here, are you?” Bryce asked.
Icheb looked up, aghast. “The what?”
Bryce smiled, a child caught misbehaving. “Hadn’t you heard? That’s what everybody is calling it.”
“You are referring to UI791116PJ4702700001?” Icheb asked.
“You already memorized the temporary designation for Seven’s new element?” Bryce asked. “Never mind, of course you did.”
“What else is there to call it until the Federation Division of Applied Chemistry gives it a proper name?” Icheb asked.
“Rumor is, Gwyn came up with the placeholder and it stuck. I’m sure she did so out of respect and affection,” Bryce added.
“I have not noticed any particular respect for anyone from Ensign Gwyn,” Icheb said, still puzzled. “If anything, she appears to treat most of her fellow officers with benign disdain, unless she intends to seduce them.”
“Holy wow,” Bryce said, clearly shocked. “You realize you said that out loud?”
“Is it inaccurate?”
“No,” Bryce said, chuckling, “but if you said it to Gwyn’s face she’d probably punch you.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time one of my female peers has done so,” Icheb admitted. “You’re suggesting the fault is mine.”
“Not at all,” Bryce replied. A sort of wistful smile settled on his face as he shook his head gently. “Please don’t take offense.”
“I have not. But Seven might. The term seems intended to belittle her discovery.”
“There isn’t a junior officer in this fleet other than you that Seven doesn’t intimidate,” Bryce noted. “It’s a coping mechanism, not an insult, I promise you.”
Bryce’s words were completely intelligible. The tone suggested kindness, even affection. Any meaning beyond this eluded Icheb.
“I am not detecting any of the . . . ahem . . . element either,” Icheb said.
“I have a theory,” Bryce said, moving effortlessly to a new topic.
“About what?”
“This,” Bryce said, opening his arms to take in the entire area.
“What is it?”
“I’m starting to think the whole planet might be a massive abstract art installation.”
Icheb studied Bryce’s face. Its lines and contours were at rest, but his bright blue eyes twinkled merrily.
“It would not be the first,” Icheb noted. “At the Academy we studied the Inuioda Pardemom. Have you heard of them?”
“No.”
“They devoted the majority of their planetary resources to artistic endeavors. Their society collapsed after five centuries when they were invaded by the Belnin.”
“Alpha Quadrant?”
“Beta.”
“Huh. That sounds like a shame.”
“They created some astonishing pieces on scales few have ever matched, none of which have survived. Once they had evolved to prioritize their artistic pursuits, they refused to believe that other species might take advantage of them and ceased creating and sustaining defensive technology,” Icheb said. “Their desire for harmony at all costs sowed the seeds of their ultimate downfall.”
“Professor Treel?”
“Yes.”
“Do you miss it? All those wonderful theoretical discussions?” Bryce asked sincerely.
Icheb almost replied immediately in the affirmative. The part of him that didn’t understand what was happening in this moment, but believed it was somehow significant, would have gladly fled to the comfort and safety of academic pursuits. It had been toying only moments before with the relative joys of assimilation.
But the rest of Icheb knew he wouldn’t have traded this moment or any other since he had joined the fleet for the façade of security the Academy provided. For all its terror, the present was invigorating. Icheb suspected he was supposed to enjoy the intense and confusing emotions now beginning to overwhelm him. He did not, but wondered if he might eventually.
“You could be correct about the sculpture’s purpose,” Icheb said.
Bryce smiled. “Wouldn’t that be something?”
“It would, but personally, I suspect we will find there is much more to these constructs than evoking subjective responses.”
“Any hypotheses yet?”
“No,” Icheb replied honestly as Lieutenant Cress Benoit came into view on the opposite side of the construct. As he waved Bryce and Icheb over to his position, the ensign added silently, Just mysteries.
• • •
Between final adjustments to the crew’s planetary rotation teams and schedules, collecting his gear, signing off on all final departmental reports, and officially transferring command to Lieutenant Kim, Captain Chakotay was the last of his group to reach the surface. Upon arriving he found Admiral Janeway, Captain Farkas, and Commander Glenn pacing over what appeared to be a vast metallic deck plate. O’Donnell was scanning some of the native plant life that bordered the plate’s north side.
Unlike many of the other constructs, the one native to Biodome 04 was not plaited. It was a perfectly smooth sheet, roughly rectangular, that covered almost five square kilometers and was composed primarily of three stable osmium isotopes. Osmium was one of the least abundant elements o
f the Earth’s crust. Chakotay wondered if he was staring at more of the element in one place than had ever existed on his homeworld. Back in the days when wealth could be accumulated and measured in monetary units, a find like this would have made its discoverers grotesquely rich.
The scene before him filled him with an almost giddy delight. The people responsible for leading the Full Circle Fleet through the Delta Quadrant thus far had faced peril at almost every turn. To see them now, heads bent over their tricorders, moving slowly and purposefully around this scientific anomaly, was to imagine them as they must have been when their careers with Starfleet began. They had become warriors, but once they had been scientists and explorers. It was incredibly satisfying to simply flex those muscles again.
The southern edge of the plate was bordered by a forest of tall blue stalks that spread across several miles, almost to the biodome’s edge. Aerial scans confirmed that a number of small but deep pools of water were spaced almost perfectly equidistant from one another across the same area. Chakotay found the spot where the others had discarded their personal duffel bags beside four small crates stocked with survival gear. Barring an unexpected emergency, the admiral intended to spend the next five days and nights on the surface, and Chakotay hoped to do the same. He was also looking forward to a late-night swim, assuming the water was warm enough. He didn’t think he’d have too much trouble convincing Kathryn to join him once he’d found an appropriately secluded spot for them.
Dropping his bags and opening his tricorder, he headed toward the others. Janeway looked up as he approached and offered him a smile so wide it nearly stopped him in his tracks.
Even admitting his personal bias, Kathryn had never looked lovelier. Her auburn hair had started to grow long again of late and rather than tame it in the blunt cut that had become her standard over the last year, she’d opted to let it go for a bit. It was coiled loosely at the base of her neck, with a few unruly wisps framing her face and curling in the slight humidity. She’d dispensed with her uniform jacket and wore a simple gray short-sleeved uniform tunic and black pants that hugged the contours of her petite frame. Her eyes were bright blue, reflecting the platinum glow of the surface on which she stood. Her cheeks were flushed with exertion or excitement; it was hard to tell which.
The smile suggested the latter. He hadn’t caught her in a moment of such unreserved delight in a very long time, and he knew at once that his choice to bring all of them here had been a good one. Starfleet Command would commend them and likely footnote this part of their mission as significant primarily for Seven’s discovery. Chakotay would prize the effect it had had on the fleet’s crews far more.
“Chakotay, over here,” she said as soon as their eyes met.
The edge of the plate was only a few meters away, and as he stepped up on it, the first thing that struck him was how warm it was. He could feel the heat radiating up through his boots. Had his tricorder not confirmed the plate’s composition, and had he not known that osmium’s half-life was measured in hundreds of thousands of years, he might have worried about radioactive decay. As it was, he simply marveled along with the others at the strange artifact.
“Have you figured out what it is yet?” he asked when he reached her side.
“Not at all,” she said. “But it extends down more than six meters below the surface, like a solid brick.”
“I’m surprised you can’t cook on it,” Chakotay said.
“The temperature beneath the surface is more than thirty degrees cooler,” Janeway said, offering him her tricorder, where a rough map of the plate’s molecular composition was taking shape. “It mitigates the effect of the ambient radiant energy. But, unless I’m mistaken, the flow of air over the surface is also designed to control temperature.”
“We’re in an enclosed biodome,” Chakotay said. “There are no weather patterns to create air flow.”
Janeway shrugged. “I’m not sure how it’s done, but I believe the energy field does much more than enclose the space. It also regulates temperature and keeps the atmosphere within circulating.”
Captain Farkas and Commander Glenn had paused over a section of the plate and rested on their hands and knees over it. Janeway and Chakotay ambled toward them, curious.
“Yoga?” Chakotay asked when they were within earshot.
“Later, by the lake,” Glenn replied with a wink. “We thought we detected some irregularities in the surface, but it was just some sediment that had settled there.”
“How do you manufacture something this large and this perfect here?” Farkas asked, sitting back on her knees and brushing the dirt from her hands. “According to my tricorder, the thing is flawless. Even our best industrial replicators have miniscule margins for impurities. Did someone create it somewhere else and just drop it here?”
“I don’t see how,” O’Donnell said, joining the group. “A ship of the size required to carry this thing couldn’t have landed on the surface.”
“Maybe they transported it down,” Farkas suggested.
“If they did, it was in pieces. And I haven’t found a single seam in it yet, have you?” O’Donnell asked.
“No,” Farkas replied.
“What have we got on the planet’s mineralogy?” Janeway asked. “Is there sufficient osmium in the crust or buried beneath it to have harvested for creating a piece this size?”
“No,” O’Donnell replied. “That analysis is still incomplete, but the densest concentrations of metals beneath the surface appear to be significantly heavier.”
“They could have been converted,” Janeway suggested.
“Using what magical technology?” O’Donnell asked. “There’s nothing here except for the results of whatever process formed these things. Work like this requires civilization and science and math, and all of those things tend to leave a mark where they are cultivated.”
“Could this have been a piece of something bigger?” Glenn asked. “Or maybe it was intended to be cut into smaller layers and used for building something.”
“Like what?” Farkas asked.
“The hull of a ship?” Glenn posited.
“It’s too soft for that. But more important, doesn’t it feel to you like this thing is in its final form?” O’Donnell asked. “This entire ecosystem has to be balanced for preservation. The plant life around us isn’t random or decorative. It exists to process the atmosphere contained within the dome and to maintain a specific chemical composition. I’m not sure how it accomplishes this yet. Our tricorders aren’t being terribly helpful this morning. But visual analysis coupled with a lifetime as a botanical geneticist tells me that the growth rate of the organic life here is incredibly slow. I won’t be able to confirm this until I can get some samples back to my ship, but I guarantee you when I do, we’re going to find intentional arrested development. After four thousand years, one or more of these specimens should have vanquished the others and overrun this biodome. That’s what nature does when left to its own devices. It competes and it evolves or it dies. There is nothing about this that is natural.”
“What does that suggest about the people who created it?” Chakotay asked.
O’Donnell shook his head. “It’s not that we’re not capable of the types of genetic manipulation that could create a perfect closed system like this.”
“But this isn’t how we think,” Janeway said. “As a culture we put intentional limits on the kinds of genetic manipulation we permit. Our mandate is to allow all living things, sentient or otherwise, to develop without interference as much as possible. Yes, we cure disease and improve agricultural yields and harvest the minerals we need to live and build what we require, but always with a sense of sustainability and forward motion. We live for progress.”
“And this, whatever it is,” O’Donnell added, “is the opposite of progress.”
“If whoever made this was trying to tell any explorers who came after them to appreciate stasis, might our presence here disturb that?” Chakotay asked. �
�Are we altering these perfectly balanced systems just by being here?”
“Not in small numbers,” O’Donnell said. “But if we started cutting down trees and digging up minerals, or tried to build permanent settlements here, we certainly could.”
“Could all of this be some sort of natural museum?” Glenn suggested.
Chakotay shrugged. “It might be now. But I’m not sure that’s how it started. Who the hell did this?”
“I don’t know, but I, for one, hope we’ll be here long enough to find out,” Janeway said.
7
* * *
VOYAGER
As Lieutenant Harry Kim entered astrometrics, he paused to observe a stunning image on the massive viewscreen that dominated the space. A small star moved through a solar system consisting of seven planets, clearly caught in the gravitational pull of the large star at the system’s center. As it progressed, all of the planetary orbits were disrupted. The gravimetric stresses were so intense that each planet lost its orbit and was torn apart in spectacular fashion.
Eventually, the new star settled into an uneven orbit around its larger partner, dancing among the wreckage of an entire system.
“Simulation failed,” the computer reported, as if that much weren’t painfully obvious.
“What exactly are we trying to simulate?” Kim asked, startling Seven, who turned abruptly to face him.
“The birth of this binary system,” she replied.
“Do you get extra points for each planet you destroy in the process?”
Seven smiled wanly. “This isn’t a game, Captain.”
Kim understood that she was mocking him, but he had to admit, he liked the way that sounded. Nothing else in his life made sense, but Paris had been right about one thing. From the moment he had assumed command of Voyager much of the tension he’d been carrying for the last several weeks had diminished. And somehow, just sharing the issues with which he was struggling with Tom had helped. Kim was lonely without Nancy in his life, but he no longer felt alone. He had work to do, but he also felt like he had room to breathe. And probably most important, his daughter had been born. He hadn’t been able to admit to himself, or to Nancy, how much he had wanted her to live. He didn’t feel he had the right to force that choice on Nancy, especially with everything else she was facing. Only now that it was done did he understand how much of his anxiety over the last several weeks had centered around that single, unexpressed wish. Absent that crushing pressure, Kim found he once again had the bandwidth to focus on his duties to the ship and the fleet. He also no longer felt the almost constant need to punch something. For better and worse, his priority had been forced to shift from himself to the hundred-plus crew who were now his responsibility. It focused his mind in a way nothing else had since Nancy’s diagnosis.
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