Twist of Faith

by S. D. Perry

  We can’t talk to them, and at the moment, we can’t pull them out. There was also no way to easily dock a shuttle, not without someone operating the freighter’s lockdown controls. Blowing out a chunk of bulkhead was possible, but it would take time to do it safely.

  Will was due to report within the next few minutes, and was decidedly punctual as a rule; when he realized that the Enterprise couldn’t be contacted, he’d have the team initiate their communicator emergency signals. The transporters should be working by then.

  “Prep a shuttle, and have a rescue team standing by,” Picard said, not liking that he had to include it as one of the better options, knowing that he wanted as many contingency plans available as possible. “Security, send someone to transporter room one, have them suited and briefed. Have Dr. Crusher standing by with a medical team as well.”

  Less than two minutes after the wave had come and gone, Picard had done what he could to influence the outcome of the situation. He watched the freighter as it slowly drifted away from safety, wondering what could be keeping the away team from noticing that their tricorder readings had changed.

  Kuri Dennings had been thinking about her days at the Academy as she walked, feeling fondly nostalgic and a little irritated that she couldn’t seem to pay attention to her surroundings. To see an occupation-era Cardassian freighter as it had been during those years…it was the chance of a lifetime, and yet she couldn’t stop reminiscing about people she’d known, remembering names and faces she thought she’d forgotten. She had signaled in at fifteen minutes or so without thinking about it, too intent on her memories to care much about what everyone else was doing.

  Kelison, with that silly hat he always wore to dinner, until Stanley hid it. The birds that nested outside the dorm. And Kra Celles, who could impersonate Lieutenant Ellisalda dead-on, from her facial mannerisms to that high, wavering voice….

  When she finally stopped walking, she realized she had found the weapons store, directly beneath the bridge. It was connected to a yeldrin, a kind of hand-to-hand-combat practice room common on older Cardassian ships. In the corridor between the two rooms were a dozen dead men, all Cardassian—after thirty years of weightlessness, they’d been cruelly dumped to the floor by the Kamal’s sudden gravity. She’d avoided looking at them, disturbed by the blank, ice-lensed gazes and stiff and awkward poses. They reminded her of the time she’d gone fishing with her brother on Catualla. They had stored their catch in a refrigeration unit that had malfunctioned, turning the fish into blocks of gray, lumpy ice. At the time, it had been funny….

  …and we joked about it, we called them ichthysicles, and Tosh was still laughing about it the last time we talked. When he called to tell me he’d met someone, a woman, and he thought he was falling in love.

  A transmission in the middle of the night from her father, seven months after their vacation to Catualla. She’d been half asleep until she’d seen his face, seen the horrible struggle not to break down in the way he blinked, the way his chin trembled. He was the bravest, strongest man she’d ever known, but his son, her brother, was dead at the age of 26, victim to a freak cave-in at one of the mines he surveyed.

  “Tosh is dead, baby,” and he’d wept openly, tears running down his tired, tired face.

  Nine years ago, but the pain was suddenly as fresh as it had been that very moment, and Dennings slumped against the icy wall of the yeldrin and clutched at herself weakly, trying to hold herself against the terrible pain.

  Tosh is dead, baby. Tosh is dead….

  Ensign Dennings slid to the deck, sobbing, lost to the memory.

  After Miles O’Brien had transferred to DS9, he’d kept in intermittent touch with the Enterprise—sometimes to say hello, to catch up with how the crew of the “D” and later the “E” were doing. In the early days he would contact La Forge just as often to complain good-naturedly about his new job. DS9 had once been the Cardassian “Terok Nor,” a uridium processing station—and, as Miles was quick to point out, Federation technology simply didn’t function very well when plugged into machines built by Cardassians.

  Not without a lot of rewiring, and some very imaginative bypass work. It wasn’t that the technology was that much more or less advanced—only a two-point difference on the Weibrand logarithmic developmental scale, at least when the Kamal was built. But the fundamentals were distinct, from the positioning of warp engines to the computer’s defense capabilities, and La Forge found himself appreciating O’Brien’s troubles, seeing them in a whole new light. Even the mission last year to Sentok Nor hadn’t prepared him for this. He was having a hell of a time figuring out how to get around in the freighter’s most basic systems. It wasn’t helping that he couldn’t seem to get anything to power up properly.

  I should get Data back up here, see if he can make sense of some of these translation disparities… La Forge scooped a .06 laser tip out of his tool case and sparked it, deciding to weld two of the console’s EPS processing wafers together, see if he could boost efficiency—and hardly aware that he was doing it, he found himself thinking about how Leah would tackle the Kamal.

  She’d be able to get a handle on this, no problem. Together, they’d be able to manage it easily…if it was the Leah he’d known on the holodeck, his own personal version of the engineer….

  La Forge felt a sudden flush of shame, remembering how she’d found his private program, his small fantasy of working with the brilliant engineer cruelly exposed. He’d never exploited her image, using the holographic program as a kind of confidence-builder—but he had made Dr. Leah Brahms much friendlier than she was comfortable with. He remembered the look on her face when he’d walked into the holosuite, too late to keep the real Leah from seeing the Leah-projection…he remembered the anger and embarrassment in her eyes, remembered thinking that he had caused those feelings, that she probably thought he was some kind of perverted miscreant when all he’d wanted was to be with her, to work side by side with a woman who respected him as much as he respected her—

  La Forge frowned and shook his head, wondering why he was rehashing that particular aspect of their relationship. He’d found out she was married, she’d realized he wasn’t a creep, and they’d ended up parting on friendly enough terms….

  This place is getting to me. Old ship, old feelings.

  He’d been daydreaming since they arrived, running through all kinds of personal history as he worked. No harm done, he supposed, although he was usually better at focusing himself.

  He lowered the bright torch tip to the processing chips, concentrating on the fine web of filaments. There was a spark, a wisp of smoke, the gentle swirl claiming his awareness.

  —blind and alone, the smell of smoke thickening—

  He’d been five years old, still too young for the VISOR implants that would allow him sight, and the fire had been started by a short in his bedroom’s heating unit.

  I didn’t call out at first. I thought that if I stayed very still and quiet, it would go away. A blind child alone in his room at night, fists clenched and sweating, silently praying as hard as he could that there was no smoke smell, the air was clean, and that wasn’t the crackle of flames, wasn’t-wasn’t-wasn’t—

  It wasn’t until he actually felt the building heat that the little boy had screamed finally, screamed until he’d heard running footsteps, his father’s gasp and mother’s curse and more running. He’d burst into tears when he’d felt strong arms lift him up and away, the voice of his excellent father soft and soothing in his ear, it’s okay, Geordi, shhh, everything’s okay now, shhh, my son, it’s over and everything’s okay…

  Feelings of love and remembered terror welled up in his heart and stomach, reminding him of how he’d loved them, of how dark his life had been except for their light, remembering…

  After her hurried briefing, Deanna Troi reached the bridge as quickly as she could, the intensity of the atmosphere immediately setting her teeth on edge. The Enterprise was shadowing the freighter, which was
apparently only minutes from hitting a strong current that would toss them, unshielded, into the whirling, deadly spumes of light. Will’s report was officially overdue, and the transporters were still off-line…there were still too many variables for exact predictions, but simply, if they couldn’t make contact with the away team soon, they would be lost.

  Deeply frustrated, the captain was listening to an engineering update and leaning over the helm’s console, watching stats. Deanna took her seat, breathing deeply as she opened herself up, first acknowledging and then tuning past the people directly around her. She felt for Will, searching for the familiar presence in a radiating arc of awareness, but couldn’t find him; she couldn’t find anyone. She hadn’t really expected to, the Badlands disrupted all sorts of sensors, even her innate empathic sense, but she’d had to try.

  Having nothing to report, Deanna stayed silent, watching the freighter, hearing status revisions and possible solutions to the problem—but her concern for her lover and friends wouldn’t allow her any real objectivity. She gave into it instead, recognizing her own need to feel productive in the face of such frustration.

  Nothing to lose, anyway.

  Deanna closed her eyes for just a few seconds, seeing herself, seeing a sense of warning expanding from her presence, mentally speaking words of alarm. Will, you’re all in danger, look out, receive, understand that you’re in trouble. She knew that it was probably useless, she wasn’t much of a sender outside her own species, but her faith in their connection gave her hope—that by some chance he would feel the fear in her thoughts and understand what was happening, before it was too late.

  Riker walked until the silence got to him, and then he remembered. He remembered, and was afraid.

  There was death everywhere, Cardassian bodies stiffly jumbled like stick dolls and no sound but the sounds of his own body, his heart and respiration, the rustle of his uniform against the inside of his suit. It was as though the ship was holding its breath, waiting, in between what had come before and what was coming next, the silence a secret in the empty space.

  Quiet and secret, secret and hidden…

  He’d reached the living quarters. The Kamal had small, individual rooms for her crew, the entries dark and open, the bodies here all heaped at the end of the main corridor. He was at the opposite end, his back to a corner where another hall intersected the one filled with bodies, his hand on his phaser. He shouldn’t be afraid, he knew that, and so he wouldn’t draw his weapon…but his envelopment in the memory was complete, his outrage and horror was new.

  They’d come for him at night, to perform medical experiments. Years ago. Secret experiments conducted on the sleeping crew by a secret race, the constant, random clicking of their voices or claws like insectile rain, like a black, evil thaw. They’d been solanagen-based entities, and they’d killed Lieutenant Hagler, replacing his blood with something like liquid polymer, and surgically amputated and reattached Riker’s arm for no reason he could ever know or comprehend….

  …and I volunteered to stay awake, to carry the homing device so that we could seal the rift between their space and ours. I took the neurostimulant and I waited, waited for them to take me, knowing that they would dissect me awake and not care as I screamed.

  Laying there in bed, seconds like hours in the dark, twitching from the hypospray, waiting in perfect silence, wondering if he’d make it back. And then the abduction, and feigning semi-consciousness as they’d clicked and muttered from the darkness, telling their secrets in an alien language….

  He knew he had to act, he had to do something, but the feelings were overwhelming. Paralyzed, Riker hunched further into the corner, listening to the past.

  Data stood in the Kamal’s communal eating area, accessing seemingly random personal information. Although he had experimented with daydreaming in the past, the spontaneous nature of the experience was unusual, particularly under the circumstances. A self-diagnostic did not inform him of any problem. Still, it was perplexing; the occurrence of memory recall did not normally interfere with his ability to function, but he found that his designated task—to observe this specified section of the Cardassian freighter—did not seem as important as the examination of his previous experiences and aspects thereof, which seemed to occur to him in no particular order.

  The sentience of Lal, stardate 43657.0. Learning to dance, stardate 44390.1. Meeting Alexander, son of Worf, stardate 44246.3. Deactivating Lore, stardate 47025.4. His attempt at a romantic relationship with Ensign Jenna D’Sora, stardate 44935.6. His return to Omicron Theta, stardate 41242.4. Commanding the U.S.S. Sutherland, stardate 45020.4. Sarjenka, stardate 42695.3. Kivas Fajo, stardate 43872.2…

  Data’s understanding of each memory’s relevance to his current situation was lacking, and the only common element was that he seemed to be present for each one. He decided he would return to the Kamal’s bridge and speak to Geordi about it—but thinking of Geordi called to mind an entirely new set of experiences, and he paused to consider them, interested in his apparent ability to direct the focus of his memories.

  Geordi’s unnecessary funeral assemblage, stardate 45892.4. The disappearance of the U.S.S. Hera, on which Geordi’s mother was captain, stardate 47215.5…

  “Captain, the transporters will be ready in two minutes or less.”

  The freighter would only be safe for another four minutes, at most. Not enough time for a rescue team to find anyone, and he didn’t want to risk it without knowing if the away team’s comm units were operating. Beyond that, it was unlikely that a transporter beam could pull them out in time, the interference of the storms too great.

  Last resorts. They could try to use low-power phasers to nudge the freighter onto a new trajectory…but given its condition, there was no way to be sure it wouldn’t cause catastrophic damage. Even if it worked, they might conceivably end up sending the freighter hurtling into the path of another plasma flare.

  “Is security ready?” Picard snapped.

  “Yes, sir. Mr. Dey is fully suited and standing by in transporter room one,” a voice over the comm called from security. “He’s been briefed to objective.”

  Beam in, call an emergency, beam out. They’d have to hope that all the away team members still had working comm units, and weren’t somehow restricted from using them. It was the last realistically possible option; if they couldn’t get the team out through the steadily closing time window, there might not be any way to save them.

  Something was wrong. Vaughn’s internal journey through the past was starting to include events outside of his experience, or one series of events, specifically—the loss of the Kamal, and the deaths of the people surrounding him. The integration of memories not his own was gradual at first, but his alarm grew with each unfamiliar experience.

  The woman on Panora who cursed us for letting the Jem’Hadar come. A stand of dead garlanic trees, poisoned by biogenic gas. A plasma storm, bursts of powerful energy buffeting the freighter, the impulse engines knocked out in the first wave of burning light…

  Not me. That never happened to me.

  Vaughn struggled to understand as the memories kept coming, so strong that he was nearly incapacitated. He forced himself to take a step forward, then another, practically blinded by the persistent wash of feelings and images, fewer and fewer his own.

  The brilliance of exploding Jem’Hadar ships over Tiburon. The Cardassian captain shouting, ordering for power to be diverted to the shields. The controlled terror on the faces of the men guarding the prisoners, when they realized that life support had been cut by half.

  The purplish light was growing in intensity, brightening, becoming bluer, and Vaughn sensed a familiar odor, comprised of unwashed bodies and desperation and overcooked soup; it was a prison smell, or that of a refugee camp. Sadly, he’d known enough of both to be certain. He took another step forward, remembering the soulless gaze of the first Borg he’d ever seen, and the soft prayers of a Bajoran couple who’d asphyxiated less than ten meter
s from where he now stood, and the ashy gray faces of the gasping Cardassian guards, still grasping their rifles—

  —this is not some personal catharsis I’m having, I have to stop this—

  —and there, at the back of the cargo bay, the source of the light. A twisting, fluid shape in an open box, less than a half meter in size, propped up on a broken crate. The object itself was barely visible behind the shining, pale blue rays of light that it emitted, the dark red of the emergency lights drowned out by its radiance. He stumbled toward it, suddenly sure that the light was creating whatever it was he was experiencing.

  Dying, they were all dying, Cardassian and Bajoran alike, suffocating—

  —the Cardassian occupation. Bajoran history…

  Orb. The Orbs of Bajor.

  Another memory, but this time, there wasn’t another to push it away, as though it was a memory he was supposed to have and keep. The Orbs were religious artifacts, supposed to generate spiritual visions or hallucinations of some kind; the Bajoran faithful believed that they were gifts from their gods. Read about them somewhere…

  It was still the past on the Kamal, the strained hisses of death all around him in the cold bay, but Vaughn felt stronger, clearer. And when he reached the box, studded frosted jewels or reflecting ice, he thought for just a moment that there was someone with him, standing at his side. A tall, dark human, a man who seemed to radiate a kind of serenity as strongly as the Bajoran artifact radiated light—

  —and then Vaughn closed the box’s intricately carved door and he was alone, standing in the cold, silent peace of the long dead Kamal.

  Only a few seconds later, an unfamiliar male voice sounded in his helmet, identifying itself as a security officer and demanding that everyone on the team trigger his or her emergency signature immediately.

  Vaughn quickly hefted the box and set it by his feet before tapping the contact on the forearm of his suit, motivated by a strangely compelling certainty that the Orb was ready to leave the icy, floating tomb where it had rested for so long.