“I do not disagree.”
A light chuckle echoed through the comm system. “But she tends to think about problems the way we were taught at the Academy. Every situation is a test she thinks she might fail. So she plays things safe. She never wants to do anything wrong.”
“Some errors are essential to discovery,” Seven said, slicing another shard and depositing it in her pack.
“That’s probably true, but it doesn’t mean that it feels good to make them. You make connections that Devi can’t seem to find. She lives inside the box. For you, it’s like there is no box. She might eventually reach the same conclusions you do, but she won’t get there the same way. There will be lots more trial and a lot less error and she won’t ever go out on a limb with a fringe theory unless she’s sure she can prove it. What she’s looking for in your reports is the train of thought that led you to any particular discovery. She thinks you’re better at this than she is, so she wants to be more like you. I keep telling her she needs to relax. She’s her own worst enemy, if that makes sense.”
“It does. But Lieutenant Patel should not compare herself to me or anyone else in the fleet. Each of us has a unique role to play and many ways in which we can contribute to the fleet’s work.”
“Forgive me, Seven, but that’s easy to say when everyone already knows you’re brilliant.”
“All of Lieutenant Patel’s superior officers believe her to be a valued member of our crew,” Seven said.
“Have they ever told her that?” Gwyn asked.
“I do not know. I have never participated in the crew review process.”
“What the . . . ?”
“Ensign? Is something wrong?”
Gwyn’s voice was faint and the comm now carried a strange crackling sound to Seven’s ears. It sounded like something was interfering with her signal.
“None of these metals are supposed to be in liquid form, are they?” Gwyn asked.
“You should limit your samples to those available on the surface. At greater depths, it is possible . . .”
“. . . I don’t understand. The tricorder isn’t making any sense of . . . what the hell is that?”
The fear in Gwyn’s voice made Seven drop her tools on the spot and move immediately back toward Gwyn’s position.
“Ow . . . that’s really . . . ouch, what the . . . ? Seven? No . . . no . . . Seven?”
EV suits weren’t designed to allow running, but Seven pushed herself, taking large, bounding steps to move as quickly as possible.
“Calm yourself, Ensign.”
A loud screech sounded over the comm that resolved into steady white noise.
“Ensign? Ensign Gwyn, please respond,” Seven said.
A few meters farther and she gained the top of the rise that led back to Gwyn’s position. The sight that met her eyes was horrifying.
Gwyn had fallen to her knees, holding her right arm out in front of her, waving it wildly. Her right hand and forearm were covered in a thick, viscous black fluid. It moved of its own accord past her elbow, toward her shoulder. With the comm channel malfunctioning, Seven could not hear anything, but as soon as she reached Gwyn’s position she could see that within her suit, Gwyn was screaming.
Seven moved to grasp Gwyn’s left arm and studied her display panel. It was flashing bright red and indicated multiple breaches. Her oxygen supply was rapidly depleting, and the suit was detecting unacceptably high levels of radiation.
The black fluid was still moving. Seven searched the ground and quickly retrieved Gwyn’s phaser. She adjusted the setting to stun and aimed it directly at the strange black substance. A quick burst and the fluid seemed to solidify. Gwyn fell to the ground, limp and unconscious. Whatever the substance was, it was obviously corrosive and possibly toxic, but there was no way to get Gwyn back to the shuttle without the protection the rest of her suit still provided.
Careful not to touch the substance herself, Seven grabbed a rock and used it to try and remove a little of the black goo that had solidified upon contact with the phaser beam. It fell from Gwyn’s suit in dry flakes.
“Hang on, Ensign,” Seven ordered as she lifted Gwyn over her shoulder and carried her back to the shuttle.
DK-1116
Lieutenant Patel started forward into the darkness.
“Whoa,” Lasren said sharply, grabbing her by the back of her wet suit and tugging.
“What?” Patel demanded.
“We’re not going in there alone.”
Patel looked around the cavern. “There’s no one else here, and I’m not going to wait for Jepel and Vincent to risk the dive.”
Lasren shook his head. “You’re so intent on finding whatever is back there, you’re not thinking straight. We don’t have to wait for them to dive down here. Voyager’s transporter room has a lock on our position.”
“Oh, right,” Patel said, chagrined.
“Plus, don’t you think we should share this with the rest of our team? Isn’t that part of the point of this exercise . . . all of us working together?”
Patel activated her combadge. “Patel to Voyager.”
Waters responded. “Go ahead, Devi.”
A few minutes later, Jepel and Vincent materialized in the cavern a few meters from the open doorway.
“Wow,” Vincent said, playing his light all around him. “This is amazing.”
“You know what I bet is even more amazing?” Patel asked.
“What?”
“Whatever is back here behind the hidden door Lasren and I found. Let’s move.”
Jepel was quiet, simply studying his tricorder readings. Lasren could sense unspoken anger studiously controlled.
“Omar?” Lasren said softly, stepping close to him.
The young Bajoran lifted his dark brown eyes to meet Kenth’s. Not now, they demanded.
Much as Lasren wanted to respect Jepel’s wishes, he wasn’t about to enter an alien environment with a team member harboring resentment toward one or more of the rest of them.
“Look,” he began. “I don’t know what we’re going to find down here, but I do know that if it’s problematic, the only way we’re going to survive it is by trusting one another.”
Lasren could see Jepel’s jaw clenching.
“Whatever you have to say, you should say it,” Lasren continued.
Some of the tension Jepel was holding seemed to release. Turning to Patel, he said, “Lieutenant Patel, a word?”
“What is it?”
Jepel stared at her for a long moment, then shook his head. “What you just did, endangering all of us in hopes of discovering this, was bullshit. I know you fancy yourself the leader of this mission, but I will not follow anyone who is careless about my safety or their own.”
Patel absorbed this, then stepped closer to him. “I apologize,” she said coldly. “It was a risk, but a calculated one. I didn’t have time to explain it, but the odds were good, based on my readings of our most recent scans, that this cavern was here. You don’t have to like following me. But I am the senior officer, so if that doesn’t work for you, speak now and you can transport back to the surface. I’m sure there’s time to assign you to another team, maybe one that’s planning a little flower gathering or sunbathing.”
Lasren didn’t like where this was going one bit, but he also knew Patel was the only one who could solve it, were she the least bit inclined to do so.
“Devi?” Lasren said.
“What?”
“The only operative words there were the first two you spoke. The rest only added insult to injury.”
“We don’t have time for this.”
“This is the reason we’re all down here. We’re the next generation of Starfleet’s finest. Most of our current commanding officers have been at this for decades. They weren’t handed their jobs. They earned them. And if we expect to take their place, this is how we demonstrate our readiness. You made a mistake. None of us care that it panned out. It was still wrong. We need to know that th
is was a momentary lapse, not a character flaw. Acknowledge that, or we’ll be forced to conclude that we might be dealing with a reckless officer and act accordingly.”
“You know why I did it, Kenth,” Patel said. “You know how hard I worked preparing for this. On any other mission, a find like this would be given to more senior officers. Together, we’re all about to prove that we’re every bit as capable as they are of contributing to our work in a meaningful way.”
“I’ve never questioned my ability to contribute to this fleet’s missions,” Jepel said. “My status as a junior officer is a simple function of lack of experience.”
“Exactly. And this is how we fix that,” Patel insisted.
“Not entirely,” Lasren corrected her. “You have a choice to make here, Devi. You can be the officer who made this discovery at the expense of your credibility, or the one who realized in a critical moment that leadership isn’t about being smart or being right. It’s about protecting those you lead and making sure they understand what you’re asking them to risk and why.”
“Captain Chakotay doesn’t explain every command decision he makes to us,” Patel pointed out.
“He doesn’t have to. There isn’t a single officer serving on Voyager who doubts his commitment to our safety. You think his choice to send the most experienced officers he has on missions like this is a judgment on your lack of ability. It isn’t. It’s about assessing risks and setting realistic expectations. We all get our chances to show we’re ready for more responsibility. This is yours and we all want to see you succeed. So please stop screwing it up.”
Patel’s face flushed. A bevy of conflicting emotions swelled within her. Lasren couldn’t help but empathize. He could only hope that she would accept the life preserver he was offering.
Finally she said, “You’re right. I’m sorry. Jepel, Vincent, I sincerely apologize for frightening you both. It was careless. I was only thinking of myself and that’s unacceptable. Can you forgive me?”
Lasren, Vincent, and Jepel exchanged glances and nodded.
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Jepel said. “That’s all I needed to hear.”
“Guys?” Vincent asked.
“Yes?” Patel replied.
“Was that light always there?”
All three turned to peer down the hallway, where a faint blue light now lit what appeared to be a long corridor.
“No, it wasn’t,” Patel said. “Tricorders, please.”
All four began to scan the hallway ahead.
“A new power source has been activated,” Patel noted.
“Something knows we’re here,” Lasren said.
“Is that your empathic abilities talking?” Jepel asked.
“Yes, as well as the fact that we had to endure a weird and invasive identification protocol to get the door to open,” Lasren said.
“Do you sense hostility?” Patel asked.
Lasren shook his head. “No. It’s still just a sense of presence, nothing more.”
Patel removed a phaser from her pack. “I’ll feel better if we all arm ourselves,” she said.
“Agreed,” Jepel said.
“I’ll take point. Lasren, will you bring up the rear?”
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
“We’ll go slow and take as many detailed scans as possible. We can analyze the data later. Let’s just focus on collection for now.”
“Understood,” Lasren said.
The first hundred meters of the corridor were traversed with an overwhelming sense of tense expectation. The walls were bare, seamless metal plates composed largely of iron, copper, and aluminum. There were no visible doors or junctions. They followed a gentle downward slope until they reached the source of the light.
At the end of the corridor stood another open doorway. It was circular, similar to but larger than the one at the entrance. Patel entered first, and Lasren could hear her catch her breath in what felt to him like awe. Vincent and Jepel hurried in after her. By the time Lasren passed over the threshold, the other three had reached the center of the room. They faced outward, staring openmouthed at the walls of the vast space.
Lasren joined them, moving to Patel’s side. The entire room was lined with tiny alcoves carved into the walls. Each alcove contained a small sphere, roughly a dozen centimeters in diameter. Each sphere was illuminated from within with a pale blue light. Although the effect was similar to a massive collection of lightbulbs, Lasren did not for a moment believe that the spheres’ purpose was as a light source.
Lasren’s heart began to race. The sight was beautiful and mysterious, but fascinating as it was, nothing in this room felt like the presence he continued to sense.
“What is this?” Jepel asked for all of them.
“My tricorder isn’t giving me anything,” Patel said. “It’s like they don’t exist.”
“There could be a scattering field of some kind. Whatever is powering them wasn’t detectable from the surface. Maybe there is an automated security program,” Vincent offered.
The spheres were too high to reach. Lasren tore his eyes from them and began to search the rest of the room. That’s when he noticed the other three circular doors spaced evenly about the walls. He appreciated the symmetry. If nothing else, it gave him the distinct sense of purposeful construction.
“I want to try something,” Patel said. “Each of you go and stand by one of the doors. Don’t touch them. I just want to see if they react to proximity.”
Lasren, Vincent, and Jepel did as they had been instructed. Nothing happened.
Patel moved along the outer circumference of the room, walking slowly, tricorder in hand.
“There are faint electromagnetic waves emanating from the center,” she said, looking to Lasren. With a shrug and a nod, he urged her on.
She carefully stepped back toward dead center of the room. When she reached it, a blue pillar of light blinked into existence. It was impossible to tell if it came from above or below her position.
“Are you okay, Devi?” Lasren asked.
Bathed in the incandescent glow, she smiled and nodded. “You have to see this,” she said, motioning them to step closer. As they did, Lasren realized that within the pillar, strange glowing symbols floated.
“Is that a control interface?” Jepel asked.
“I think so,” Patel said. “But since I can’t translate any of them, I don’t want to touch anything.”
“Step out for a second,” Lasren suggested.
She did so and the blue pillar vanished.
“That’s amazing,” Vincent said.
“Let’s test the doors,” Lasren suggested.
Patel nodded. “One at a time.”
Together they moved to the door directly across from the open entrance. As she had done before, Patel placed a hand in the center and said, “I am Lieutenant Devi Patel . . .”
Before she could finish introducing herself, the walls all around her began to scream.
10
* * *
DK-1116
Liam O’Donnell did not believe in impossible things. He operated best in quantifiable domains. His entire career had been an exercise in pushing the limits of life-forms. Things that on the surface seemed difficult or impossible, with enough time, patience, and scrutiny, eventually revealed their secrets and became the clay in his hands from which he created new, unique things.
In some ways, this entire planet felt like a similar exercise. But he had not designed this system. Someone else, someone he suspected was infinitely more capable than he, had set all of this in motion and then brought it to a screeching halt. As of yet, he had no idea how they had accomplished this miracle. He was an outsider, and its tantalizing mysteries had slowly transmuted from interesting to annoying.
Impossible, O’Donnell thought for the hundredth time since he began sampling the wide variety of plant life that populated the biodome.
“I’m curious to know what you make of all of this, Commander,” Admiral Janeway cal
led from over his shoulder. So intent had he been on observing the regeneration of a single blade of tall white grass, O’Donnell hadn’t registered her soft footfalls as she approached his position.
Tearing his eyes away from the magnificent, improbable spectacle, he rose to face her. “Have you reached any conclusions, Admiral?”
A mischievous smile played across her lips. “Chakotay and I believe we might be dealing with zombies.”
O’Donnell laughed aloud at this. “The living dead. I suppose that’s as good a description as any.”
“Commander Glenn found a lovely spot for stargazing on the top of one of those hills back there. We thought we’d make camp and have dinner. She and Chakotay are setting things up. I was hoping you’d join us. There’s not much light left. Walk with me?”
The commander collected his tools and specimens and joined the admiral as she led him to their evening campsite.
“What about Regina?” he asked as soon as they were under way.
“She finds this place disturbing. She’ll be back shortly, but she’s left the analysis to us for the time being.”
“She’s not the only one,” O’Donnell said. “Everything here that looks like life is something else. It’s not exactly artificial. The limited cellular analysis I have been able to do shows trace nucleic acids. But they only seem to activate under certain circumstances. The gene regulators involved are more complex by several orders of magnitude than anything governing most life-forms, which, as you know, are already insanely complex.”
Janeway slowed her pace as they reached another patch of the tall white fronds. “Do you think it’s something we could replicate?”
O’Donnell shrugged, carving his own path alongside the admiral’s. “Our tools can give us accurate readings at the subatomic level. But just because we can see something and understand its purpose, doesn’t mean we can re-create it ourselves, let alone build upon progress like this.”
“Like Seven’s catoms?”
“Exactly. In some ways this seems like a variation on programmable matter. It’s the fossilized helix and trace nucleic acids that make this more difficult. But catoms are matter designed to sustain life. They are not, in and of themselves, living things. These are.”
Architects of Infinity Page 18
