He turned to T’Pol, resolute in his decision. “I’m placing you in command. I advise you to maintain your present course and speed. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but try to keep an open mind.” He forced a small smile. “Especially when it comes to things the Vulcan Science Directorate says are impossible.”
They held a long look.
“I will try,” she replied, and he knew she meant it.
“Captain, this is crazy,” Trip calmly insisted. “How do you know what they’re going to do—”
“T’Pol’s in command, Trip,” he said, not letting his friend finish. What he was doing was hard enough without a challenge in front of the rest of his officers. “Do whatever you can to help her.” He looked around the room one last time. “That goes for all of you.”
He met everyone’s eyes one by one, trying to give them the strength he knew they already had, finally settling on Hoshi. “Keep an eye on Porthos for me, would you?”
She nodded as he stepped into the turbolift.
[124] “Remember,” he added. “No cheese.”
Hoshi smiled despite the her building emotions.
The turbolift doors closed on the captain. He could not look back at his crew, feeling as if he had been abandoning them. He stood motionless as the turbolift began its descent, thinking back to the first time T’Pol had taken command of Enterprise. It had been during their mission to return Klaang to the Klingon homeworld. At the time, no one in the crew had trusted her, not even himself. Now he couldn’t imagine a more suitable member of the crew to leave in charge. At least that was a small consolation as he went to meet whatever it was his fate held.
The lift stopped and the doors hissed open. Turning, he stepped out into a decimated corridor. Shock flowed through his body as he immediately realized he was no longer on Enterprise. Looking back, he discovered the turbolift was gone. Wherever he was, he was alone.
The air was thick with decay as he looked down the dark corridor with its charred and twisted walls. The construction seemed both familiar and alien, but certainly different from anything he had seen before. He could hear the distant eerie sound of a heavy wind whistling through the walls. Archer cautiously began to walk toward the noise.
On the Enterprise bridge T’Pol had taken the captain’s chair, calculating the most logical way to rescue Archer, knowing the only thing she could do was follow his [125] instruction and continue on the way to the Vulcan ship. Once there, she would convince her superiors to bring reinforcements and find the missing captain.
Hoshi’s panel beeped once again. Now it was T’Pol’s turn to nod to Hoshi, who activated the screen in response.
“Your captain’s playing a very dangerous game, Sub-Commander,” Silik said as soon as he appeared.
“Game?” she asked, truly unaware of what he meant.
“He has thirty seconds left,” Silik continued. “Did he think I wasn’t serious?”
T’Pol gestured in Hoshi’s direction. The ensign understood the message and cut off the viewscreen. The sub-commander then turned to Trip, who was already working at his station.
“The turbolift’s on E-deck,” he said, referring to the level that had been Archer’s destination. “It’s empty.”
“Where is he?” T’Pol asked.
Trip continued to work. “I’m not reading his biosigns. He must be on the Suliban ship.”
T’Pol took a moment, trying to figure out if Silik was leading them into a trap. Knowing she did not have much time, she motioned back to Hoshi, who brought Silik’s image back up on the viewscreen.
“Captain Archer is no longer aboard Enterprise,” T’Pol said. “Perhaps you should check with the vessel you sent for him.”
“I thought he was smarter than this,” Silik hissed. “He could have saved all your lives. What a waste.”
[126] This time Silik tapped his controls and his image blinked off the screen.
“The docked ship is moving away,” Mayweather read off his console.
“It’s targeting the warp core,” Reed added. Then the information on his screen made his blood run cold. “They’re all targeting the warp core.”
Archer continued to move toward the wind, which was whistling loudly around him. Climbing over fallen beams, he made his way carefully through the hall. He approached a large, jagged opening in a wall that had been a window at one time, long ago. Stepping over some more fallen debris, he could see a devastating vista spread out before him. What appeared to have been a large city had been reduced to a post-apocalyptic nightmare.
He was on the high floor of a burnt-out skyscraper. The shells of scorched buildings stretched out as far as the eye could see. The sky was dark and turbulent. He could hardly tell that it was daytime.
Nothing could be heard but the howling wind.
“Ten minutes ago that vista was more beautiful than anything you could imagine.” Daniels stepped out from the debris. His voice was flat and dead.
Archer turned to find the man dressed in a black, ribbed uniform with no discernible insignia. He appeared to be nearly as confused as Archer and twice as affected by the devastation around them.
[127] “Where am I?” Archer asked.
Daniels pointed to a nearby doorway, dazed. “I had breakfast in that room less than a half hour ago,” he said, partially ignoring the question. “Then I was instructed to bring you here. They told me the timeline wouldn’t be safe if you boarded that Suliban ship.” Daniels paused to consider what he was saying. “Someone was very mistaken.”
“Where is here?”
“You’re in the thirty-first century, Captain,” he said, answering the when, but not the where. “Or what’s left of it.”
“You said the Suliban wouldn’t follow us,” Archer pressed on, trying to get a straight answer out of Daniels. “That we’d make it safely to the Vulcan ship.”
“As far as I was told, that was exactly what was supposed to occur.” His voice was still flat.
“So you’re telling me this just happened?” Archer looked out at the scene of decimation. “It doesn’t look like this just happened.”
“No,” Daniels replied, trying to figure it out himself. “It looks like it happened a long time ago.”
Archer took in what Daniels was saying. “If bringing me here caused this, then send me back. I’ll take my chances with Silik.”
“You don’t understand,” Daniels said. “All our equipment ... the time portals ... they’ve been destroyed. Everything’s been destroyed.” He took a deep breath. “There’s no way to send you back.”
Archer was stunned by Daniels’s words. Unable to speak, he stepped forward to view the devastation. Through the [128] haze and smoke he could see dozens of buildings blackened and charred. Rubble covered the streets, but from his vantage point, he could see no people ... no life at all. The hollow wind continued to blow around him, bringing with it the smell of death and decay.
Chapter 13
The atmosphere on the Enterprise bridge could not have been more tense. Members of the crew were conducting various types of internal scans at their stations trying to figure out where their captain had gone. They worked under the watchful eye of Silik as his enraged face filled the viewscreen, thirty Suliban ships continued to aim their weapons at the Starfleet vessel.
“He’s not onboard,” T’Pol said with an edge of intensity. “You must have sensors that can confirm that.”
Silik was losing patience with what he believed to be stalling tactics. “You’ve lied to me before! If you don’t tell me where he is, I’ll have no alternative but to ...”
“Come see for yourself,” T’Pol calmly offered, “or send your soldiers. You’ll realize I’m telling the truth.”
Glances were exchanged around the bridge as the officers silently questioned T’Pol’s tactics.
Silik wondered what kind of game the Vulcan was [130] playing and how far she was willing to take it. “Drop out of warp,” he commanded, “and prepare to be boar
ded.”
Reed’s finger was already hovering over the controls of his console. The moment Silik’s image blinked off the viewscreen he tapped the com. “Security teams to docking ports one, two, and three.”
T’Pol tapped the com on the command chair in response. “This is Sub-Commander T’Pol,” she said ship-wide. “All security teams remain where you are.”
Trip jumped out of his seat. “Are you crazy?” he asked, composure gone. “How do we know how many Suliban are coming aboard? They could try to take over the ship.”
As usual, T’Pol ignored his highly emotional state and stuck to the facts. “There are thirty armed vessels surrounding us,” she reminded the commander. “Unless I’m mistaken, their weapons are targeting our warp core. Mr. Reed?” She looked over to the tactical officer.
The lieutenant checked his console to confirm information he already knew. He acknowledged with a nod of his head.
“So unless you have a better suggestion?” she asked.
Trip hesitated. He wanted to come up with a dozen alternative scenarios, but knew that she was right. They were going to have to wait this one out and see where the Suliban took them figuratively and literally. He shrugged his reluctant agreement to T’Pol as she took a seat in the command chair.
* * *
[131] How the hell did I get here?
The question that Captain Archer asked himself had nothing to do with the temporal mechanics involved in time travel. He wasn’t worried about disproving the Vulcan Science Directorate’s views on the concept. All that he was concerned about was how the hell he had wound up almost a thousand years in the future.
What exactly was the point of no return?
Archer stepped out of what once was an apartment building and into the desolate street. Daniels had told him that he was in the future, but this was like no future he had ever imagined. The buildings around him were decimated. The ground beneath his feet was pockmarked and laden with rubble. It was as if the future had imploded around him.
He cautiously followed Daniels down a narrow street, careful to keep an eye out for falling debris. With their postapocalyptic exteriors, the buildings looked as though chunks could fall off them at any moment. But this was no recent destruction. The debris that filled the streets was buried in dirt and dust so crusted over by time that the wind could no longer disturb it. While Archer took in the surroundings with understandable disorientation, he couldn’t help but notice that Daniels seemed similarly shell-shocked. The man was moving at the mournful pace of a funeral dirge.
“Where are we exactly?” Archer asked. He didn’t recognize the place, but if they were hundreds of years in the future, he wouldn’t have expected to.
Daniels looked as if he hadn’t even heard the question.
[132] Although Archer could not imagine what was going through the man’s mind, he knew there were still questions that needed answers. “What was it you told Trip?” he asked, referring back to a conversation from a much earlier time. “Something about Earth still existing?”
“Depending on your definition of Earth,” Daniels droned on, repeating the words he had spoken when he had originally revealed himself to the Enterprise crew. He had once excelled at careful wordplay devised to avoid altering the timeline with too much information. But, he clearly wasn’t in the mood to play those kinds of games at the moment.
“So are we physically on the planet Earth?”
“Right now where we are hardly even exists,” Daniels replied, rallying himself from his near catatonic state, to make a token attempt to continue the game. He had done enough damage.
Great, Archer thought. Am I going to have to wait to see the Statue of Liberty sticking out of the water before I get my answer to that one?
Archer refused to give in. He wanted answers. “If this place was destroyed as long ago as it seems to have been, what are you doing here?” he asked. “You and your ‘watchdog’ buddies don’t exactly fit into all this.”
Daniels was losing his patience with Archer. “You’re thinking of time travel like we’re in some H. G. Wells novel,” he brusquely replied. “We’re not. It’s far more complicated. There’s no way for you to understand.”
Don’t you condescend to me, Archer thought. He might [133] not be able to understand the specifics, but he was an educated man. The basic rules would be enough to satisfy him. “Try me.”
Again, Daniels chose to ignore the captain.
Archer had had enough. He stopped walking and placed his palm against Daniels’s chest. Neither of them would be moving until he received some answers. “I realize your little Utopia is gone,” he said, “and I sympathize. But if you’re telling me the truth, if you pulled me nine hundred years into the future”—he indicated the devastation around them—“to this future. I think I deserve some answers!”
“I don’t have any answers,” Daniels said, more frustrated with himself than with Archer. “And you’re right. I shouldn’t be here—which means you shouldn’t be here either. But you are. We are.” Daniels let out a sarcastic laugh and continued walking without worrying whether or not Archer would follow. “We brought you here to protect the timeline,” he said, almost to himself. “We did quite a job.”
Archer did follow and nearly walked into Daniels when the man turned a corner and stopped without warning. His face registered a peculiar range of emotions, from shock to resignation.
“What’s wrong?” Archer asked, surveying the area. He saw nothing but more of the same crumbling buildings they had passed since leaving the apartment building.
“It’s gone.”
“What’s gone?” Archer asked. There didn’t look to be [134] anything missing from the area in front of him. It was just row after row of decay.
“The monument,” Daniels replied. “It was right here, on the same street as the library.” He seemed to accept the full ramifications of what he was seeing and added it to the list of growing regrets. “It was obviously never built.”
The man’s reaction triggered yet another in Archer’s series of questions. “Why is that a problem?”
No response.
It was beginning to piss the captain off.
“Who did it commemorate?” he asked, pressing for information. And what did that person have to do with what’s going on around us? he wondered.
“Not who” was Daniels’s simple reply.
“Then what,” he persisted.
“An organization,” Daniels replied. His words were tentative. It was as if he didn’t want to bring himself to say the words aloud. “A Federation. It doesn’t exist for you. Not yet.”
“But it will?” Archer wasn’t just asking for the sake of clarification. He wanted to know.
Yet, Daniels once again chose not to answer. He seemed preoccupied, which Archer could certainly understand. But that was no reason to shut the captain out of the situation.
“Okay, fine,” Archer said, giving up on the useless line of questioning. “Keep your monument to yourself. Where’s the library you were talking about?”
Daniels pointed farther down the street. “It should be down there. If it ever existed.”
Finally, Archer had a destination. If a library was there, [135] it was bound to have some kind of information. At the very least, there would be something to tell him where he was—and possibly a more precise answer as to when. He started walking in the direction that Daniels had pointed without bothering to see if the man would follow.
“But even if it is there, it’ll be no help,” Daniels added as he caught up with the captain. “All the data’s stored electronically.”
The pair continued walking through the burnt-out city streets in silence. Archer knew that any further conversation would be pointless. He was going to have to figure out what was happening on his own. At the very least he was going to have to gather enough information to force Daniels into admitting some truths about what could have gone wrong and how it can be fixed.
It did not tak
e long for them to reach the library from the spot where the memorial should have stood. The building was still there, although it looked to be in about the same shape as the surrounding environs. Archer stopped at the foot of a huge flight of stone stairs.
“I take it, this is a good thing?” he asked.
“Depends on what we find inside,” Daniels responded as he began the ascent up the staircase with Archer in tow.
The captain could make out some writing above the entrance to the library, but years of weather and neglect had wiped away much of the lettering. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked to be written in Latin, or possibly Greek. There really weren’t enough of the letters left for him to even attempt to translate.
[136] Daniels pushed open the doors blocking the library entrance. They nearly fell off their hinges as the rusted metal gave way under pressure. The creaking sound implied that no one had passed through them for years.
The interior looked as time ravaged as the rest of the city. Archer briefly wondered if the destruction had been limited to this city or did it extend over the entire planet. If this was Earth, it should be teeming with life in every corner of the globe by this point in the future. Surely everyone couldn’t be gone from the entire planet. They just couldn’t, he insisted.
A strong breeze blew through the lobby, kicking up some scraps of paper. Archer knew that it would be hard to determine how long ago the library had been abandoned since it was so exposed to the elements. Then again, he wasn’t sure that it mattered. He just wanted to know how he could get back home.
“Books,” Daniels said as they stepped into the library’s huge rotunda. “Made with paper. There aren’t supposed to be books here.”
“Well, there are,” Archer stated the obvious. “So I suggest we use some of them to figure out what you did to the last thousand years when you brought me here this morning.”
He thought back to the local library that he visited while growing up. His father took him there every other week to teach him about the history of flight. Together they would look over images of da Vinci’s designs and the Wright brothers’ test flight. They had read all the logs of the first astronauts and watched the vid clips of the first [137] moon landing. It was in that library that his dreams of exploration had been nurtured.
STAR TREK: Enterprise - Shockwave Page 10
