The Latter Fire

by James Swallow

  “A rogue planet?” suggested McCoy.

  Kirk was frowning. “Ambassador, those signals you’re receiving . . . they are time-dilated, correct?”

  “Yes,” Tormid snapped.

  “No long-range subspace radio,” Uhura noted.

  Tormid turned on Kirk. “This is clearly some kind of extreme event. We had no warning of it. We know as little about it as you do!”

  Kaleo strode over to them, gesturing with her communicator band. “Voice transmissions are being received.” She fell silent for a moment as the Assembly members released a collective gasp of fear.

  Spock looked up again to see a troubling image on the screen. Most of the view was blotted out by a flash of light that appeared to be caught in the act of consuming the patrol ship he saw earlier.

  “Let us hear them,” Gatag said weakly.

  Hidden speakers in the ceiling over their heads hissed into life and suddenly the air was filled with a mix of overlapping, panicked Syhaari voices. The universal translator struggled to make sense of the chaotic refrain, but Spock managed to pick out snatches of speech here and there. What he heard was troubling; a handful of picket ships were caught in the gravity shadow of the alien object, and the crews were reporting attacks being directed at them from some unknown source.

  Whatever threat force they were facing, the Syhaari ships were no match for it. The members of the landing party and the Assembly alike held their breath as they listened to the patrol crews dying millions of kilometers distant.

  “We have to do something,” McCoy muttered.

  “It is already too late, Doctor,” Spock told him. “What we are hearing took place several minutes ago. I am afraid the crews of those ships have already perished.”

  “I’ve heard enough,” Kirk stepped up to the alien scientist. “Tormid! Let us help your people. My ship can—”

  “This is not a matter for offworlders!” said Tormid, turning to jab a long finger at Kaleo. “Get to the landing fields, take a flight of our ships out there! I authorize you to deputize a quad of warp three star-rangers! Go now!”

  But as he spoke, the voices issuing out over the communications channel began to cut out, one by one. A deathly quiet fell over the Assembly hall as the screen became a wall of blank static.

  “This is no time for foolish pride!” barked Kaleo. “How long will it take me to get to the port, get the ships active and into the void? If there is still anyone out there, we won’t make it in time!” She didn’t wait for Tormid to reply and pushed past him toward Kirk. “How fast can your Enterprise get to the edge of the Veil?”

  “At high warp? Two minutes. But we have to go right now.”

  Tormid opened his mouth to say something, but Kaleo spoke over him. “Then we go!”

  Spock’s captain flicked open his communicator. “Kirk to Enterprise. Scotty, I need you to go to warp as soon as we’re aboard. Set an intercept course with that thing out there.”

  “Understood, sir. Transporter’s ready.”

  “Ch’Sellor and I will remain here,” Xuur said quickly.

  Kirk nodded and beckoned Spock, Kaleo, and the others to him. “Five to beam up. Energize!”

  “What the hell are we getting into now?” said McCoy as the shimmering glow of the transport effect enveloped them.

  * * *

  “Transporter room to bridge, we’ve got them.” Lieutenant Kyle’s crisp English accent issued out of the panel under Scott’s right hand, and he tapped the intercom button in return.

  “Acknowledged.” He looked up. “Mister Sulu? Don’t spare the horses.”

  “Course laid in,” replied the helmsman, “accelerating to warp speed.” On the main viewer, the curve of Syhaar Prime’s green-blue surface suddenly leapt away, and the distant haze of the dust cloud shell shimmered with distorted light.

  Arex read off a report from his panel. “Estimated time to contact point: one hundred and thirty-three seconds.”

  The chief engineer nodded, his eyes still on the screen. Out in deep space, the view would have been a curtain of darkness lined with warp-elongated stars, but here inside the gas-dust sheath around the Sya system, the display seemed oddly inert, with little to give a sense of forward momentum. He looked away.

  “Put all decks on red alert,” ordered Scott, throwing a glance over his shoulder to M’Ress. “Warn sickbay to prepare for wounded, just in case we come across any survivors.”

  “Aye, sir,” said the Caitian, her paws patting the console in front of her. “Doctor McCoy has just reported in down there.” M’Ress’s slender tail flicked in agitation; she was monitoring the Syhaari communications channels at the same time, and Scott could tell by the draw of her lips that what she was hearing was not good. “For what it’s worth . . .”

  “Weapons status, sir?” Sulu asked, pulling Scott’s attention back. “We don’t know what we’re going up against here . . .”

  Scott nodded grimly. “Let’s not take a chance. Spin up the phasers, put photon torpedoes in the tubes. Better to have them and not need them, then . . . well, you know how it goes.”

  As the order left his lips, the turbolift doors behind the command chair hissed open, and the captain bolted onto the bridge with the rest of the landing party following a step behind. Scott stepped smartly out of Kirk’s seat and took up a place alongside it.

  “Report,” said the captain.

  “Less than a minute to intercept, sir.”

  Spock exchanged a few words with Haines before taking her place at the science station. He hesitated, peering at the junior officer’s readings, his eyebrow rising. “Ensign, you are quite certain these figures are correct?”

  “Yes, Commander,” she said, with a wary nod. “But I can’t explain them either. It’s gone, sir. The object . . . it just fell off the scopes.”

  “What is she saying?” Kaleo stood close to Kirk’s chair, her eyes darting around the bridge. “That . . . thing we saw on the screen? How could it just disappear?”

  “Spock?” Kirk shot him a questioning look.

  “I require more data, Captain, before I can provide a cogent theory.”

  Scott crossed to the engineering console, where Ensign Zyla was standing his post. “Sir,” said the Cygnian. “I’m reading a rise in subspace radiation as we approach the target. Decay particles in the delta, ­berthold, and cochrane bands.”

  “Confirmed,” said Spock, picking out the junior officer’s words from across the bridge with that pin-sharp Vulcan hearing of his. “We may be seeing the aftereffect of a warp core breach or a localized spatial rift.”

  “Danger to us?” said the captain.

  “Negligible,” Spock replied. “As long as we maintain our shields.”

  “Intercept point in ten seconds,” Arex reported. “Reducing to impulse power in five. Four. Three. Two. One.”

  The blurry skyscape flickered and shifted as the Enterprise dropped out of warp speed a few thousand kilometers short of the Veil’s diffuse inner surface. It was hard to measure where the matter of the cloud truly began, the thick haze constantly in motion under the gravitational force of the star and planets it enveloped.

  But what was clear was the storm of debris that appeared off the bow of the starship, spread out in a slick of shattered fuselages and broken engine nacelles. Pennants of spilled electroplasma trailed from holed warp drives, and sparkling fields of flash-frozen atmosphere caught the weak light of a distant sun. Everywhere Scott looked he saw burnt twists of wreckage, and it made his gut knot. These were not his ships, and they had not been crewed by his people, but a man could not be a spacer for as long as Montgomery Scott had without sharing the common horror that any starship crew would feel at such a sight. From the corner of his eye, he saw Kaleo stiffen, saw her heavy jaw drop open in shock. Poor lassie, he thought. No doubt she’ll know the names of every unlucky soul on
those boats.

  “Scanners to full power,” Kirk ordered, his tone muted by the same sight. “What’s out there?”

  “The . . . aggressor . . .” Spock began, grasping for the right words, “does not appear to be present.”

  Uhura shook her head, exchanging a wary look with M’Ress. “How can something as big as a moon hide itself?”

  “Perhaps it retreated into the dust cloud?” offered the Caitian.

  “Possible,” Spock conceded. “But difficult to determine due to the radiation in the area affecting our sensor acuity. We could deploy a probe.”

  Kirk shook his head. “Hold on that for the moment. Mister Sulu, focus all scanners on the wreckage. Full-spectrum analysis. Look for any life signs, no matter how weak.”

  “Help him with that,” Scott told Zyla. “Channel some auxiliary power into the sensor dish.” He turned toward the two captains. “It might boost the sensitivity, at least at close range.”

  “Good thinking, engineer,” Kirk replied, and he took a moment to talk to Kaleo. “Is there anything you can tell us that might be important?”

  “I can only echo Tormid . . .” The Syhaari woman’s eyes glittered. “I know nothing about this!”

  “I didn’t mean that. Your ships, Kaleo. Do they carry lifeboats, escape pods?”

  She swallowed, clearly regretting her outburst. “Of course . . . the explorers do have a kind of storm-­shelter module amidships. But those were omitted from the craft refitted for patrol operations.”

  Spock bent over his viewer hood, reading off the results of the sensor scans. “Detecting mass equivalent to four explorer-type ships. Metallic debris. Polymers. Organic . . . matter.” He paused, avoiding saying the word bodies in Kaleo’s presence. “No mayday beacons evident. Whatever caused this was swift and deadly.”

  “How could that happen?” said Haines quietly.

  “An intense energy bombardment, Ensign,” Spock said gravely. “They may have simply been overwhelmed.”

  Kirk accepted this with a nod. “What about specific kinds of weapons fire? Any traces of that?”

  “Inconclusive, Captain. If this was an attack, it was by a means unfamiliar to us, and the Syhaari ships were unable to initiate any retaliatory action.”

  “Sir.” Sulu peered at his panel, a look of confusion growing on his face. “I think . . . I may have something. Off the starboard quarter, five degrees over the bow. A nonmetallic object, low mass, low velocity.” He glanced up. “Captain, I think it might be . . . someone.”

  “I have the trace now,” Spock offered. “A single biological form adrift in space. Syhaari physiology. Life signs failing.”

  “Scotty!” Kirk called out to him. “Get down to the transporter room, we’re bringing that survivor aboard.”

  “I want to be there!” said Kaleo, and Kirk gave her a nod.

  As Scott dashed for the turbolift, the Syhaari captain came in after him, vaulting over the bridge handrail. “Don’t worry, we’ll save them,” said the engineer.

  “Only one . . .” Kaleo said, almost to herself. “Out of dozens . . .”

  * * *

  McCoy entered transporter room one at a run, a heavy medical kit swinging off his shoulder. “What have we got?” he demanded, eyes flicking to Scott and Kyle at the control panel.

  “One survivor,” Scott told him. “I hope.” He shot a look at the lieutenant. “Cross-circuit to phase B and boost the matter gain!” Kyle nodded silently and obeyed the order.

  A figure was already forming on the beaming pad, warped by the shimmering glow of the matter-­transport flux. He was no technician, but McCoy could tell by the strangled sound of the device that the transporter was having difficulty assembling its target back into a coherent form. The doctor’s lip curled. It might be a common part of life aboard a starship, but Leonard McCoy had never, ever been comfortable with transit through a device that tore a man into his component atoms and then shot them through the void to be reconstituted someplace else. If he had his way, no one would ever travel on anything other than shuttles.

  Kaleo was standing nearby, wringing her furred hands and staring at the transporter as if she could will it to work correctly just through force of hope. McCoy felt a pang of concern. If this poor fool didn’t come through in one piece, if the transporter malfunctioned, then the last thing he wanted was for Kaleo to have to witness the result. McCoy had seen what could happen when beaming went wrong, and it was a horror he wouldn’t wish on anyone.

  But then she met his gaze, and he knew that she wouldn’t take kindly to any insistence that she wait outside. McCoy saw a flash of determination in those eyes and remembered where he had seen the same thing before. Jim Kirk, he mused. Maybe the obstinate streak is a captain thing.

  “Ambient radiation is interfering with the rematerialization process,” Kyle said with a frown. “Sir, I’m not sure we can hold on to the target much longer . . .”

  “Oh no, laddie,” Scott retorted. “We’ve come too far now to let him go.” He shot a look at McCoy. “Doctor, are you ready?”

  “Just reel him in, Scotty. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “Here we go.” The engineer’s hands danced over the panel. “Stabilizing flux. Energizing.”

  The transporter’s atonal song shifted again, and the figure on the pad gained definition. For one ghastly moment, McCoy thought the survivor’s body had bloated into something horrific, but then he realized it was actually an environment suit made of tanned, leatherlike material. The suited figure on the pad staggered as it became solid, and when the beaming cycle terminated, it dropped to its knees with a heavy crash.

  Kaleo bolted forward, her long arms reaching out to clasp the vapor-fogged dome helmet covering the survivor’s head. McCoy’s tricorder bleated a warning about radiation traces and cellular damage, but Kaleo wasn’t about to wait for him to give her the all-clear.

  She wrenched off the helmet and tossed it away. A hot stink of stale air and something like cooked meat wafted free, making McCoy grimace. He saw a male Syhaari’s face, pale with shock and sickness, marked with lesions and patches of wilted fur. Immediately, the doctor loaded a hypospray with shots of tri-ox compound and hyronalin to compensate for the effects of oxygen deprivation and radiation damage.

  Kaleo held the survivor’s head in her hands, studying his face. “Duchad . . . you’re alive!”

  “You know this person?”

  “We trained together . . .” She leaned in close as the other Syhaari blinked and gasped like a landed fish. “Duchad! Do you know who I am?”

  “Kaleo . . .” He wheezed. “How . . . are you here? Never thought . . . I would survive.”

  “The Federation helped us,” she told him, releasing her grip to let McCoy place the head of the hypo against Duchad’s throat.

  “Easy, friend,” McCoy told him. “You’re safe now.” The drug injector hissed, and Duchad twitched as the ampoule discharged. The doctor had been careful to make sure the medicine was configured for Syhaari biology, but until he got Kaleo’s compatriot down to sickbay there was no way to know how badly injured he was.

  “We are not safe!” he hissed, grabbing Kaleo’s arm in a viselike grip. “Tell them to flee, tell the humans that they must leave before it comes back! Warn . . . warn the homeworld.”

  For a moment, Kaleo’s personal concern was set aside, and McCoy heard a captain’s manner beneath her next words. “Duchad, what happened out here? You must tell us.”

  The doctor’s tricorder chimed insistently, and McCoy saw Duchad’s biosigns spiking. He was close to losing consciousness, his body reacting to the shock of being plucked from deep space. “Kaleo—”

  She waved away his warning. “Answer me,” she insisted.

  Duchad’s eyes lost focus, and he was caught in a moment of terrible recall. “Rose from the dust, as a predator comes from the o
cean deeps. Lashed out at us with chains of fire. It was a monstrous thing, Captain. And I swear on my tribe, it was alive. So vast. It should not . . . not have been able to move so fast. Could not see it, before it was too late . . .” He coughed and shook. “Warn them!” Duchad’s eyes fluttered closed, and he sank into unconsciousness.

  “I have to get him to our sickbay,” McCoy demanded. “Kaleo, he could die here!”

  His words got through to her, and the Syhaari gave a bleak nod. “Of course, Doctor. I will help you carry him.” For her size, Kaleo was surprisingly strong, and she gathered up Duchad in her arms. “Lead the way.”

  “What was he talking about?” said Kyle as McCoy made for the door.

  “Hopefully, we’ll find out later rather than sooner,” said Scotty.

  But they had barely entered sickbay when the alert sirens started to sound, and McCoy realized that the engineer’s estimate had been a vain hope.

  * * *

  “Curious,” said Spock, unable to keep the fascination from his tone. “The object’s mass shadow appears to be in some kind of flux state. As if it is able to deliberately destabilize its own elemental structure . . .”

  “Back us off, Sulu,” ordered the captain. “Keep a safe distance.”

  “What distance would constitute safe, sir?” asked Lieutenant Arex as the object emerged before them.

  “The Delta Quadrant?” growled M’Ress, her suggestion only partly made in jest.

  “Let’s get a good look at it,” Kirk ordered. “Standard magnification in viewer.”

  Suddenly the full scope of the object was revealed on the bridge’s main screen, silencing them all.

  A huge, pockmarked orb of dark umber rock, veined with dull rivers of what might be crystal, loomed ponderously over the Enterprise. Spock was reminded of a great sea creature seen through a clouded ocean as the vast planetoid slowly emerged from the wall of gray dust that surrounded the Sya system.

  Crackles of bright lightning rippled over the surface of a thin, rudimentary atmospheric envelope around the object, flashing sharply where trailing streamers of matter from the gaseous dust cloud grazed its magnetic field. It was sheathed in a coruscating glitter of greens and blues, whips of excited molecules forming brief auroras that snaked back and forth along the lines of its poles. In terms of sheer mass, the object dwarfed the Enterprise, easily as large as many inhabited moons or asteroid colonies throughout the galaxy. Spock attempted to calculate the dimensions of the orb in his mind, but the way it moved and turned, almost as if it were under its own power, threw him off his estimates. This was something new and strange, but as with much that the science officer had encountered on his travels, something that might be dealt with.