Star Trek: Inception

by S. D. Perry

  Kirk nodded to his helm officer. “I’ll ask you to maneuver her carefully. I don’t intend for her new captain to have any complaints about the way she’s been handled.”

  The officer nodded solemnly. “Of course, Commander. No one will know we even took her out.”

  Kirk smiled. “I have no doubt. At your leave, Mister.”

  The impulse engines hummed, and the ship gently slid from the docking ring, turning so that the vast blank of space spun across the view screen before Mars came up, a dusky red half sphere beneath them. Kirk gave the few directions that were necessary, bringing the Aloia into a close orbit that would pass directly over Kraden’s lab. It didn’t take long.

  “We’re approaching, Commander.”

  Kirk tapped the control panel beneath his right hand, alerting sciences. “Begin measurement of substrata. Coordinate with engineering on transporter capacity and tractor beam range.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  He listened attentively to the conversation between the chief engineer, a Mister Young, and the “senior” science officer, a second lieutenant called Grathe. They exchanged information, hammering out the details. If it worked, it would be the first undertaking of its kind, at least that Kirk had ever heard about. When the two men were finally in agreement on the numbers, Kirk stepped in once more, told them to stand by.

  “Do we have contact with the lab?” he asked.

  The communications officer stood vigil at her blinking board. “Yes, Commander.”

  “Tell them we’re ready to begin. Transporters, lock on.”

  Young answered him from the transporter room. “Locked on, sir.”

  The communications officer pressed her finger to her ear receiver. “They’re giving us the go-ahead, sir. Lieutenant Almanza says the field is ready and is standing by for direction.”

  Kirk nodded, took a breath. “Let’s beam it up, gentlemen.”

  With Almanza, Grathe, and Young all in verbal contact, the ship’s transporters began the process of removing a wafer-thin slice of frozen Martian substrata, approximately one kilometer beneath the test plot. It would be brought up in pieces, held in carrier wave, and finally be “stacked” within a tractor beam field. Almanza was standing by to project the force field, laying it across the substrata acreage as each section was beamed out. The “floor” field would intersect with the descending “wall” fields, containing the Inception process entirely.

  Kirk let the men work, listened as they carefully applied their skills to the task at hand. The project unfolded with barely a hitch: the force field spread out beneath the test plot as Grathe and Young beamed the thin cross section of matter from the ground. The rock being taken out was micromillimeters thick, just enough to allow for the force field. There were a few false starts, and twice Almanza’s team wasn’t able to get the field projected in time; a second layer had to be removed. Both times Kirk and the others waited in tense silence to hear from Alison Simhbib, Carol’s Martian geologist. And both times she was able to tell them that the settling had been minor.

  Finally, Young called out that the last assigned plot was locked on, and a moment later, Almanza confirmed that the force field “box” was complete. Seconds later, engineering informed the bridge that the tractor beam’s load was stable, nearly a half ton of frozen Martian rock suspended behind the Aloia. Kirk couldn’t help a grin.

  We did it, Carol. He could only hope that she had been able to locate the proper chemicals to neutralize the ruined solution.

  The communications officer was also smiling. “Doctor Marcus confirms containment of Inception process. She sends her thanks.”

  Kirk nodded. “Tell her that it was our pleasure. Helm, set course for Titan, full impulse.” Geologists were standing by at the Starfleet facility on Saturn’s largest moon to receive the chunk of Martian subterranean rock. Once the Aloia delivered it, she would return to Utopia Planitia, her temporary crew disbanded. He could be back at the Kraden lab in another two or three hours, if all went smoothly. He expected that it would.

  “Course set, Commander.”

  Kirk leaned back in the chair, his chair, relaxing for the first time since he’d first heard the news about Inception. He hoped that Carol would see, in spite of her misgivings, how effective, how crucial Starfleet could be in times of crisis. Perhaps she would even reconsider a few things, about what she wanted in her own future. He’d been so afraid when he hadn’t been able to get through to her, it had made him rethink a few things himself. He was willing to give up almost anything to keep her, he’d decided. He let his hands rest on the command chair’s arms. Almost.

  “Steady as she goes,” he said, and the Aloia swung away from Mars, faced out into the bright blackness of space.

  Thirteen

  Lieutenant Almanza nodded to one of his engineers, who tapped at the controls of the projector, frowning. A second later, he looked up—and smiled.

  “Force field intersection is holding,” he said.

  Almanza’s team let out a cheer, the engineers grinning, the lieutenant clapping his men on their backs. Carol managed a smile, but most of her attention—and the attention of everyone on her team—was still riveted to Richard Dachmes, sitting at the mainframe. He tapped keys and called up lines of code as J.C. sent him the numbers from the reads. J.C., seated at a monitor farther down the counter, tapped keys of his own, the last tap an exaggerated punch at the data entry control.

  “Atmospheric measurements are in,” J.C. said.

  The analysis came seconds later. “Collated,” Dachmes said. “Gases-to-particle ratio says Inception process is contained.”

  Carol exhaled with relief. The force field would hold the atmospheric umbrella created by Inception, even if all the soil was processed. They still needed to neutralize it, but Mars was safe.

  Everyone cheered. Carol thanked Lieutenant Almanza and asked him to send her personal thanks to Commander Kirk. Almanza shook her hand warmly—but told her a beat later that his security people would want to start questioning her teammates as soon as they became available.

  An incoming call to Mac was almost lost amid the relieved chatter of the scientists and engineers. He took it at the far corner of the lab. Carol watched closely, felt her hopes leap at the look that crossed his face. He waved her over a moment later.

  “There’s a company off Io that has a stock of phelistium,” he said. “Two hundred micrograms. It can be here within the hour.”

  Carol nodded, her anxiety level slipping down several more notches. While Almanza and his men had been calibrating the force field projector, she’d had Dachmes and J.C. running simulations with their formulation to neutralize Inception. With the stocks of aleuthian gas already prepped, two hundred micrograms of phelistium was all they needed.

  Dealing with Starfleet, dealing with Kraden—compared to what might have happened, to what very nearly did—those were minor head aches. Carol looked for a chair, her knees suddenly weak, and sat down smiling. It was over.

  Everything went quickly after the phelistium arrived, and Almanza’s security people started pulling the scientists out for questioning even as the process was being neutralized. Leila had just heard the final, positive results when she was tapped. After exchanging grins with Carol and the others still in the lab, she’d headed for the common room.

  She sat on a padded bench, waiting to be called. When she’d arrived, Alison Simhbib had been in the same spot, but the geologist had been beckoned out a moment later by

  a handsome young security guard with a serious countenance, leaving Leila alone. She folded and unfolded her hands, wondering what they would ask her. She’d tell them whatever she knew, of course, but doubted very much that she’d have anything useful to contribute. What she knew about sabotage was ? well, nothing. She thought perhaps the word was French.

  She was still in a kind of shock, she thought, from everything that had happened. They all were, she was sure, but the shock was a warm one, considering the source of the
ir salvation. Mister Spock’s brilliant suggestion had rescued them from certain disaster. She hoped he was watching the net links, or had learned of the successful containment through Starfleet channels. She hadn’t had an opportunity to call him back, and it didn’t appear that she’d have a spare moment anytime soon. Carol wanted her to run an analysis of the Inception regolith as soon as she was done with her questioning, and after that—no one knew. Carol thought they’d be sent back to Earth, pending a full investigation of the matter by Starfleet and Kraden.

  The door opened. Leila tensed slightly, but it was Tamara Irwin, not Starfleet. The shy girl—she was Leila’s age but seemed younger to Leila, somehow—moved across the room, taking a seat next to her on the bench. She didn’t speak. Her dark eyes were downcast, her face pale and pinched.

  Leila felt a rush of compassion for the awkward scientist. She smiled at her, but Tam wouldn’t look up.

  “Tam, about the inventory,” Leila said gently. “It was a mistake, but everyone makes mistakes. Considering how everything worked out, I’m sure no one will blame you.”

  Tam nodded, seemed to hunch tighter into herself.

  “What happened here wasn’t your fault,” she added, and she saw with some surprise that Tamara had begun to cry behind her fall of dark hair, tears slipping down her cheeks. When she spoke, her voice was a hoarse whisper.

  “He said he loved me,” she said.

  “Who—” Leila began, and faltered, the implications forming. Tamara didn’t seem to notice, tears rolling off the tip of her snubnose, falling into her lap.

  “I had him meet me the day before we left,” she said, “when I knew I’d be the only one in the lab. He didn’t tell me he was going to tamper with the solution, he just said”—she took a deep, shuddering breath, struggling to get it out—“he just said he was going to do something to the equipment. I was doing the last inventory on the stores, and he asked me to leave for a minute, he said he wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t be, that I wouldn’t be implicated.”

  The young woman wailed, her head dropping even lower. She managed to repeat that he said he’d loved her before her words were entirely lost, her body racked with sobs. Leila automatically slid closer to her, slipped an arm around her shoulders as she cried. As dismaying, as surprising as her confession was, Leila couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. Whatever she’d involved herself with, she was paying for it. Leila whis pered vague assurances, patting Tam’s back as she cried.

  A few minutes later, when the security crewman opened the door and nodded to Leila, it was Tam who stood up. She wiped at her eyes, her face red and streaked, but managed a very small smile for Leila.

  “I was stupid,” she said, “but I might be able to fix at least some of it.”

  “No one was hurt, Tam,” Leila said, but they both knew it wasn’t so. Leila felt a stab of rage for the man who’d so manipulated the shy physicist, who’d almost certainly scarred her permanently. Whatever Starfleet would do to her, Leila had no doubt that it would be nothing to what “he” had done.

  Tam nodded anyway and walked unsteadily across the room to meet her fate.

  Kent materialized at the pad in the laboratory’s airlock, took a deep breath as he looked around, tried to still the pounding of his heart. He hadn’t spoken to the press since his minor breakdown, calling Don Byers to fill in for him back at Redpeace. But when Kraden decided to hold the latest press conference here—had, in fact, invited him to attend, along with a handful of proviro Martian politicians, presumably to demonstrate to the public that the lab was finally secure—he couldn’t pass on the opportunity. He’d pulled himself together and made the trip.

  “I’m here for the press conference,” he said, and the engineer at the transporter controls nodded.

  “Yes, sir. They’re meeting in the main lock, just north of here. Let me call for an escort—”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Kent said quickly. “Thank you.”

  Before the crewman could protest, Kent had hurried through the nearest exit. The north-south corridor outside presumably led directly to the conference room. Kent promptly turned south, seeking the lab. There was a chance that everyone had already assembled for the conference, but he hoped not; he wanted to speak to Carol Marcus personally. In the few hours since the links had reported Starfleet’s assurances that all was well, meeting with Doctor Marcus had formed into something like an obsession for him. He wanted to know—he needed to know—if she had changed her mind about the nature of her work. The rational, reasonable part of him knew that it didn’t really matter, that it had nothing to do with Redpeace’s continuing mission or his own personal culpability in what had occurred, but there was another part of him that felt a kind of blind, grasping hope, that after experiencing the horror of the possible consequences of her actions, she might have learned something.

  As though that would make it all okay, Jess said.

  Kent shook away the thought, started checking doors for the lab entrance. He found a small common room and a restroom, and was about to try a branching corridor when he saw her approaching from the south, turning the corner with a Starfleet officer at her side. A commander, judging by the stripes on his sleeve, and familiar somehow.

  Kirk. Kent recognized him as the couple approached. From the summit. The coincidence was startling, but it was fitting, somehow, that he would be here too. Kent straightened his shoulders, ready to meet them. Ready to convince them.

  And maybe convince yourself? Jess whispered.

  The couple stopped in front of him. Kirk’s face registered a hint of surprise, there and gone in an instant. “Mister Kent,” he said. “You must be lost. Do you need an escort to the press conference?”

  “Commander,” Kent said, nodding politely, “I was hoping to have a few words with the doctor—”

  Kirk started to say something, but Carol waved him off.

  “What is it, Mister Kent?” She addressed him coolly. She looked tired, bone-weary, in fact, but she carried herself with dignity.

  “Doctor Marcus, I thought that perhaps ? I was hoping that you might have reconsidered your stance on the type of experimentation that Kraden was doing here today,” he said.

  Her expression gave him nothing. “Why, Mister Kent? Have you?”

  He shook his head, found the words that he’d spent a lifetime working toward achieving, believing them as he spoke. “My organization believes that Mars, like all planets, exists in its natural state for a reason, and that it is inherently wrong to manipulate and possibly cause irreversible damage to its ecosystem. Surely what happened here today must have shown you that.”

  Carol Marcus inhaled deeply before speaking. “Mister Kent, I understand what your motivation is. I understand that you are passionate about your cause, and I apologize for any insensitivity I may have shown you before, back at the station. But I do not agree with you, and neither does most of the galaxy.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be that way,” Kent insisted. “People simply don’t understand the effects of their behavior, and of experiments like yours. As a scientist, doesn’t it upset you that this incident has irreparably damaged hundreds of square meters of Martian terrain? Terrain that can never be studied now in its natural state.”

  Kirk broke in. “Her researchers had nothing to do with that. Whole Earth—this Josh Swanson person, apparently—is the responsible party. You should be discussing this with him.”

  Kent managed to keep his head up, his gaze steady. “You’re not wrong, Commander, but there’s more to my side of the argument. You must try to understand my ideology—that natural resources have an intrinsic value that goes beyond their usefulness in consumption. Cut it down, use it up, throw it away. That’s the attitude that must be changed.”

  “I think you’re grossly overstating your case,” Kirk said. “Starfleet and the Federation strive to preserve and reuse resources. Within the UFP, Terrans rank among the most environmentally conscious. If you compared our waste outp
ut now with that of a century ago, you’d have to be a Vulcan not to be impressed.”

  “I am impressed, but I believe that even stricter specifications are in order. I want to strive for sustainability—”

  “We’re on the same page, then, Mister Kent,” Doctor Marcus interrupted. “I believe in sustainability as well, which is why my research is dedicated to ending universal hunger. I want every culture to be able to care for itself.”

  “It’s a fine ideal, Doctor Marcus, but the effects of your experimentation serve only people,” Kent continued doggedly. “Don’t you believe that, as intelligent beings, we have a responsibility to protect all life-forms? All environments?”