Aftermath

by Christopher L. Bennett

Iskander frowned. “Maybe as a warning—psychological warfare. Maybe this enemy wants to terrorize rather than simply destroy us—to cow us into accepting conquest, like the Dominion.” He peered at the structure, though, as if expecting it to erupt at any moment. “But just dropping that in our laps as a statement isn’t enough. The other shoe could fall any moment. That’s why you’ve got to attack it now, Bill.”

  “And we know this is even a weapon, how?” came a familiar, gruff voice. Scotty brightened to see David Gold and his team approaching.

  Iskander was taken aback. “Look around you, Captain….”

  “Gold. David Gold. Shalom.”

  They shook hands. “Merhaba. As I said, look around. Our city is ablaze again. Does that look like a peaceful gesture to you?”

  “In fact, it looks a little like the Starsearcher crash on Intar. That turned out to be an accident.”

  Right, Scotty remembered, it had been the da Vinci that he’d assigned to that mission.

  “And how do you ‘accidentally’ slip through the most secure defense grid ever built, bypassing its every sensor mechanism?”

  “I don’t know, but my crew here is the most likely group to find out.”

  Iskander looked impatient. “Scotty, all respect to your people, but shouldn’t they be working with the other S.C.E. teams on cleanup and ground stability? Even if we do risk the cautious approach,” and his expression showed what he thought of that, “we have specialists who are better qualified to tell us about that thing.”

  “I can tell you one thing right now,” said P8 Blue, startling Iskander, who’d overlooked her since she was down in crawl mode taking some low-angle seismic readings. The Nasat rose to full height to continue her report. “That object wasn’t designed to arrive the way it did.”

  “We don’t even know how it did arrive.”

  “We don’t need to, not for this. The structure’s not as badly damaged as the buildings around it, obviously, but it shows clear signs of stress. There are cracked support members inside, fatigue in several shell layers, and it’s visibly crumpled at ground level.” Scotty peered closely at its curves, but couldn’t tell what was crumpled and what was intentional. But he wasn’t a structural specialist like Blue. “The only reason it hasn’t suffered worse is that it seems to be designed for a higher gravity than this, using dense materials such as cortenum.”

  “Then there’s the inside,” said Tev, holding up a tricorder with a cross-section display. “Clearly designed for habitation, but not for ferrying troops. The compartment size, corridor layout—they’d be too spread out, take too long to get to battle stations or exits. And there’s nothing that looks like a weapon.”

  Good man, Scotty thought. Tev wasn’t a tactical specialist like Fabian Stevens, but he was nearly as much a “Renaissance man” as Spock himself had been. Scotty had hand-picked him for this assignment, knowing only the best could hope to make up for Duffy’s loss.

  Stevens, however, looked a little annoyed, as though Tev had stolen his lines. “And the very fact that we can scan inside,” he added, “means there isn’t any substantial shielding.”

  “Obviously,” said Tev dismissively. “More importantly, it suggests the structure wasn’t designed for combat.”

  Stevens glared. “I was getting to that.”

  “What about life signs, though?” Iskander asked. “We can’t get a clear read. They might be shielding the occupants.”

  “Or they could all have been killed on impact, and we’re just reading residual heat and organic residue,” Stevens replied.

  “Besides,” chimed in Carol Abramowitz, the team’s cultural specialist, “if this structure were intended as a warning in itself, I doubt it would look so…placid and soft. Most species would symbolize aggression with sharper, more angular designs. And if something within it, rather than the structure itself, is the message, then it probably would’ve emerged by now.”

  Scotty beamed. “Cemal, there are no better specialists around for this sort of thing than this bunch before you. Explorin’ dangerous alien whatsies, findin’ out if they’re safe and makin’ ’em safe if they’re not—that’s what S.C.E. teams like theirs are all about. And there’s no team I’d rather have here than this one. The best thing about this whole mess is that these lads and lassies are here to straighten it up. So let them do their job,” he said, addressing Admiral Ross as well now. “Send them in.”

  “This was the team that brought back the old Defiant and averted a war with the Tholians,” Ross told Iskander. “I have every confidence in them.”

  The director was hesitant. “We still don’t know what dangers there might be in there. Surely this is a job for Starfleet Security.”

  “You rang?” Domenica Corsi strode forward, seemingly towering over Iskander, though they were comparable in height. She made her case just standing there. The security team behind her, and the sizable phaser rifles they all carried, didn’t hurt either.

  Iskander sighed. “Very well. I concur. But may Allah protect you all.”

  Chapter

  2

  The comm screen in the O’Brien household had been tuned to the newsfeeds ever since the disaster struck. But Keiko had grown tired of the images and taken Molly into her room to brush her hair. The nine-year-old had protested that she was old enough to do it herself, but Keiko felt a strong need to be with her children right now, to take care of them, to keep them close and at least feel like she was protecting them.

  Besides, she knew what was coming. What Miles was about to do. And she didn’t want to be in the room when he made the call, didn’t want him to see her reaction.

  Of course he came into Molly’s room soon thereafter. The child fearlessly asked the question Keiko couldn’t. “Are you gonna go help with the accident, Daddy?”

  “That’s right, dear. I just made the arrangements with Scotty’s office, and they’ve given me an assignment.”

  “What about teaching your class?”

  Miles shrugged. “The accident’s kind of put things on hold today, honey. The Academy’s not holding classes, so people can watch, and be together, and help if they can.” He smirked. “Look at it this way—we both get the day off from school.”

  Molly pouted. “I like school. We’re learning about subspace and warp engines, so I can be an engineer like my daddy!”

  Miles wasn’t falling for it. “And you like taking classes with that cute boy Masoud, don’t you?” Molly blushed. “Well, maybe Mommy could invite a few of your classmates over for a little home schooling today, how about it, honey?”

  “Um…sure! That sounds fine!” Inwardly she winced. Why was she so bad at trying to sound sincere?

  Of course Miles caught it instantly, peering at his wife in puzzlement. “Molly, why don’t you go call your friends now?” He didn’t have to ask the girl twice—she was out the door before he finished. “Keiko? What’s wrong?”

  She rose and turned away. “Oh, nothing’s wrong. I’m just concerned about the…‘accident.’ The attack. Whatever. I’m sure everybody is.”

  He put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Well, there’s no real sign that it’s an attack. The thing hasn’t made any hostile moves—there aren’t even any clear life signs from it. Anyway, Scotty’s put Sonya Gomez’s team on it, and I’m sure they’ll clear it up in no time. I’m more concerned about the mess it’s made of the city. There’s damage all the way from Presidio Boulevard to the Marina. We may have to demolish some of the buildings that just got finished a few months ago, and there’ll have to be a whole new geological survey, no telling what new instabilities the blast has caused, and—”

  “Miles…”

  “What?”

  She quashed what she’d been about to say, and put on a calm face as she turned to him. “I’m sure you could do more good if you went ahead and started doing it, instead of standing here telling me about it. So why don’t you just go ahead?”

  He started to nod, but then sensed something
from her and frowned. Trust him to be most sensitive to her feelings when she didn’t want him to be. “That’s not what you were going to say, is it?”

  “It’s all right, Miles—”

  “No, it isn’t.” There was no anger in his voice, just pure openness and caring, which made it worse. “Honey, you know you can tell me anything.” He tried so hard, Keiko thought, to keep things running smoothly, to avoid the kind of tensions they’d had in the past. The problem was, his efforts were undermining her efforts to do the same thing.

  “It’s nothing,” she insisted. “It’s silly and selfish and I don’t want to bother you with it.”

  “Hey.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Nothing you think or feel is silly to me. Whatever it is, you can tell me. It’s when we don’t talk that things build up and cause problems.” He gave her that adorable rakish grin. “Come on—if it’s that silly just tell me and we’ll have a good laugh.”

  He didn’t seem to notice he was contradicting himself. It was the thought that counted, she supposed. Anyway, it was clear he wasn’t going to drop this. She sighed. “I really didn’t want to do this again.”

  “Do what?”

  “Complain. I was always complaining back on DS9. You were doing an incredibly hard job in incredibly chaotic conditions and instead of being supportive I just kept whining about how unhappy I was.”

  “I never felt that,” Miles said emphatically. “You had every right to be happy, to fill your own needs.”

  “But that meant going away from you, going off to Bajor. We spent so much time apart.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. It was the place, that’s all.”

  “That’s just it! I was hoping that, once we came back to Earth, we could finally live a nice, quiet life together, concentrate on being close again.”

  “I want the same thing!” he assured her. “That’s why I took the teaching job—so I’d have time for my family.”

  “And I do appreciate the intent, really.”

  “The intent?” he frowned.

  “It’s just that…no sooner did we get to San Francisco than you were off joining the repair crews, rebuilding the city. Or volunteering your time to help rebuild the defense grid.”

  Miles’s gentle, understanding mood seemed to be fading, just as she’d feared. “Those were important jobs. They had to be done.”

  “Of course they did, but they weren’t your responsibility anymore. Nobody ordered or even asked you to do these things. You promised we’d have a nice quiet life from now on, but you don’t seem that interested in living one.”

  “I’m not doing these things for fun,” he countered, his voice rising. “They needed every extra hand they could get.”

  “And I understand that, I do! But then there was the chaos from the gateways, and then the earthquake, and now this. Miles, every time there’s a problem to fix, you go off and fix it, even though it isn’t your responsibility. And I feel like I’m not seeing any more of you than I did back in the Bajoran system!”

  “What are you saying? That I care more about my work than our marriage?”

  “No, no, I’m not saying that.”

  “Everything I do out there, Keiko—every bit of it—is to keep you, Molly, and Yoshi safe. I can’t do that by staying at home! This is what I have to contribute.”

  Now her voice was hardening despite herself. “I could understand that back on DS9. You were the chief of operations; you had an understaffed department in a remote outpost. But this is Earth, Miles. This is the capital of the Federation, the heart of Starfleet. There is more ability and brilliance concentrated here than anywhere else in the quadrant. You don’t have to do it all yourself.”

  “So what do you want me to do?” he demanded. “Call up Starfleet and tell them I changed my mind? Back out of my commitment, my duty?”

  “No. No, you’ve already made the arrangements; you have to go.”

  “Then why’d you dump this on me now?”

  She gaped. “Because you asked me to! I didn’t want to burden you with it. I told you you didn’t want to hear it.”

  “Damn right I didn’t! Too late now, though, isn’t it?”

  “Look, just—just go. They need you.”

  “That’s right. They do.” An awkward silence. “Good luck with Molly and the kids,” he said curtly, and left.

  Keiko winced and rested her forehead against the wall. “I really didn’t want to do that anymore.”

  Sonya Gomez stared up at the alien structure with no idea what to do next.

  Was there any more they could learn from outside? She couldn’t think of a way. But did they dare attempt entry? Was it worth the risk? True, there wasn’t any sign of hostile intent—not recognizably so, anyway—but who knew how they might react if they felt they were being invaded? If there was anyone there at all. And how could they know for sure unless they went in? But shouldn’t they run every possible scan from outside to judge if it was safe?

  She was thinking in circles, she realized. But her thoughts just seemed sluggish today, her creativity offline. I’ve heard of writer’s block—am I having engineer’s block?

  Kieran would’ve had an idea. Kieran would’ve found some wisecrack to break the tension, make the problem seem smaller than it is and give us the confidence to face it. Kieran—

  Kieran is gone. Stop it.

  As if to drive the point home, Duffy’s replacement—no, Commander Tev, she corrected herself, realizing she had to accept him on his own terms—approached her. “Commander, I recommend we proceed inside. There’s nothing more to be gained by waiting.”

  She felt a twinge of resentment—who was this newcomer to tell her how to run an operation?—which fizzled in the face of her awareness that she wasn’t doing so well on her own right now. And in the rather striking face of Corsi, a friend and proven veteran, who said, “I concur. If they don’t want to come out and play, I say we start knocking.”

  “I’ve confirmed there’s no match in the cultural databanks,” Abramowitz added. “If there’s more to learn about these people, we need to go to the source.”

  “True—Abramowitz and Faulwell should be on the team,” Tev recommended.

  “Sure, makes sense.” Sonya nodded absently.

  “One catch, though.” That was Vance Hawkins, Corsi’s deputy chief. “The readings show a synthetic gravity field over three times Earth normal in there. We’ll hardly be able to move.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Pattie chimed in (with actual chimes, no less, or at least that was how the Nasat’s voice sounded).

  “Ahh, I think I may have a solution for that wee problem,” came Scotty’s unmistakable brogue. “With some help from a laddie I think some’a you know. Obie?”

  “Commander Gomez!” came yet another brogue, one Sonya knew. She turned, and was startled to behold a familiar face over Scotty’s shoulder—a broad, rough, comfortably lived-in face, like an old teddy bear with its fur worn off from frequent attention.

  “Chief O’Brien!” she exclaimed, her mood actually brightening a bit.

  Stevens laughed. “Or should we call you ‘Professor’ now?”

  “Fabian!” exclaimed Miles Edward O’Brien, heartily returning his handshake. “It’s Old Home Week.”

  “Been too long, Chief,” Stevens said, apparently forgetting his own question. “But that just means you’ve finally got some stories I haven’t already heard a dozen times.”

  “Ahh, my life is boring now. Good and boring,” he corrected quickly. “A cushy teaching gig, plenty of time for the wife and kids, no Jem’Hadar shooting at me…”

  “You must be hating every moment of it.”

  “No!” O’Brien insisted firmly, even though Stevens had been joking. “I’ve never been happier. Though, well, I’ll admit it’s nice to get back in the saddle for a bit, work alongside the old gang. Just for a bit, though.” He sobered. “I just wish Duffy could be here too. I’m so sorry, Commander,” he told Sonya.

  �
�That’s all right,” she demurred, really not wanting to face it again. “So what are you doing here?”

  “Well, there’s a little project I’ve been working on lately—really some of my students came up with it, but I’ve been helping out. It’s a sort of antigravity suit, designed to allow mobility in high-gee environments. The prototypes are a bit bulky, I’m afraid, but they should let us move freely in there.”

  “‘Us’?” asked Stevens. “Are you joining the team?”

  “With the commander’s permission, of course. But you’ll need me in there if the suits need adjusting or something.”

  “You mean like if they break down, as prototypes have a way of doing?” Corsi asked, skeptical as always of engineers and their experiments.

  O’Brien seemed a bit intimidated by his first good look at the statuesque blonde, but then most people were. He recovered quickly, though. “Not on my watch, Commander.”

  “We’re glad to have you, Chief,” Sonya told him. Except why did it have to be O’Brien? Looking at him just reminded her of her days back on the Enterprise, when she and Kieran had first dated. But she kept that to herself. It wasn’t his fault. It was just so frustrating—she’d committed to moving on with her life, but the universe kept throwing her reminders of what she’d lost.

  Tev stepped forward. “Commander, will you be leading the team, or shall I?”

  “If you don’t mind, Commander,” Scotty interposed, “I’d like to borrow Mr. Tev here. Stevens too. Some of us should stay out here and do some brainstormin’, try to figure out how this bloody big bauble did what it did. I have a few thoughts, but I’d like some strong theoretical minds to help me out—tactical minds, too, in case Cemal’s right and this is some kind of attack.”

  Gomez nodded. “All right, that sounds fine.”

  “One more question, Commander,” said Tev.

  “Yes?”

  He faced her squarely. “I was told I would be the second officer on this crew. Following your leadership. But you have yet to offer any. Will I have to carry that load for you? Not that I’m not capable, of course. I just need to know what’s required of me.”