Daedalus's Children

by Dave Stern

  He stepped forward and relieved the two soldiers of their weapons and communicators. Waving them away from the airlock, he opened a channel.

  “Mister Carstairs, restore power to the airlock override.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  A door at the far end of the bay opened. Scott stepped through, trailed by half a dozen other crewmen, still dressed in their prison fatigues.

  They all formed up next to the airlock.

  “Ready?” the captain asked, his finger on the override. Nods all around.

  “Then let’s move,” he said. “On three. One. Two—”

  He punched the door open as he spoke, and the assault team flew past him.

  Normally, the captain led his crew into battle. This time…

  He decided discretion was the better part of valor. Considering the way his head was still spinning.

  Archer brought up the rear.

  The airlock opened into the crew compartment of the small ship. By the time Archer stepped inside, it was full of Denari soldiers, lying stunned on the deck.

  He passed from that compartment into a forward cabin, the ship’s control center. There were four seats there, arranged in a horseshoe shape in front of a viewscreen. A woman sat in one of them, glaring up at O’Bannon, who held his weapon on her.

  “Crewman?” Archer asked.

  “Sorry, sir. She got off an alert signal.” O’Bannon looked appropriately chagrined. And no wonder.

  They’d lost the element of surprise. Sadir’s ships would be on the lookout for them now. Some were no doubt racing in this direction, even as they stood there.

  Archer couldn’t help thinking that Malcolm would never have made a mistake like that.

  “What’s done is done. Forget it,” he told O’Bannon. “The most important thing is that we have the ship.”

  O’Bannon nodded, though Archer could see his words hadn’t had much of an effect on the young man’s mood.

  Good. He won’t make that mistake next time. Assuming there was a next time.

  As Covay’s crew began recovering, Archer ordered them moved to an unused cell block. The captain followed the last of the Denari soldiers out of their ship into the cargo bay, leaving Scott and Ensign Kramer from engineering on board to begin prepping the ship for their use.

  When he emerged from the airlock, he was surprised to find T’Pol waiting for him.

  He saw instantly that something was wrong. In the two years they’d served together, he had never—not once—seen a look on her face like the one she wore now. Vulcans were masters at keeping their emotions in check, in showing nothing to the world save an impassive, neutral countenance.

  Right now, T’Pol looked as if she’d just discovered the world was flat.

  “What is it?” the captain asked. “What’s the matter?”

  She gathered herself. “I’ve completed my observations, sir.”

  “Already?” Archer frowned. “I thought you needed eight hours.”

  “No, sir. What I’ve found…” She shook her head. “We need to talk, Captain. Immediately.”

  Four

  NOTHING.

  Nothing from the PDC, the DEF, the Kresh, New Irla, Charest, Colonna, Halo-1, Halo-2, or Halo-3. Nothing from Dirsch, Elson, Egil, Makandros, or any other members of the Council.

  Nothing from anywhere in the Denari system or beyond about Enterprise or its crew. It was as if they’d vanished completely.

  Trip leaned back from the console and rubbed his eyes. At a guess, he’d just read through over a thousand intercepts—messages the Guild had downloaded and deciphered from traffic across the Denari system, messages between and among the various ships and outposts of Sadir’s government—without finding a thing. It was tedious, mind-numbing, eye-straining work, normally the kind of task he’d set a computer to do and then forget about. But there was no way to program in the search parameters he needed: Would the Denari refer to his ship as Enterprise in their messages? Would they call it the “alien vessel”? The “humans’ ship”? Had they given it a code name in the weeks before the Guild had broken their coding algorithms? There were dozens of possibilities. Dozens of potential ways they could refer to Enterprise’s crew as well. That meant that after the computer eliminated intercepts that clearly had nothing to do with ship or personnel movements—and percentagewise, there weren’t all that many of those, since most of the com traffic they had access to was regarding the newly intensified conflict with the Guild—Trip had to eyeball each message personally. Not easy work in the best of circumstances, which these most definitely were not.

  Behind him in the launch bay—in the half that had been converted into a command center for the Guild’s ongoing war effort—he could hear Kairn and one of his officers talking.

  “…and no sign of further troop movements. It may be that whatever conflict was brewing has passed.”

  “Or it may be about to start. We have no way of knowing.” Kairn’s voice had an edge to it. This last week had been a trying one for the marshal. The failure of Brodesser’s cloak, which had held out such promise. The launching of a major offensive against the Guild’s ships, in and around the asteroid belt the rebel forces called home, had racked up losses the Guild could ill afford.

  Two days ago saw the destruction of Shadow—one of only three large warships the Guild had remaining—by Sadir’s elite Planetary Defense Command, the PDC. Three hundred people had perished, including one of the Guild’s leaders, Vice Marshal Ela’jaren.

  And now…

  From what Trip had overheard during the last few hours, it seemed as if the Guild’s worst fears were coming true.

  Members of the planet’s ruling council—Sadir’s most trusted subordinates, generals and leaders of substantial military forces in their own right—were preparing to go to war, to fight for the chance to rule their system. A consequence of the Guild’s failed attempt to kidnap General Sadir, which had resulted in the man’s suicide and left Denari without a leader.

  He shook his head. What was his mom always saying—misery loves company?

  There was sure more than enough misery to go around on Eclipse right now.

  A shadow loomed over him.

  “Find anything?”

  Trip looked up and saw Lieutenant Royce, Eclipse’s first officer, leaning over him.

  “Plenty.” He shook his head and nodded at the screen, which was filled with line after line of text, a list of the forty or fifty most recent intercepts he’d gone through. “None of it about Enterprise, though.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Royce said, sounding anything but. The lieutenant was a tall, thin man who rarely smiled. He rarely showed emotion of any kind, in Trip’s experience—Royce had been on both missions Trip had undertaken for the Guild, Brodesser’s rescue and the aborted kidnap attempt—the farmer with the pitchfork in the Grant Wood painting.

  “Fane and her team”—Royce nodded behind him, toward the crowded area where Kairn still stood among a group of computer stations—“have just finished going through another batch of intercepts. I’ll have her relay those to your station.”

  Trip sighed. “Thanks. Just what I need, more messages.”

  “Take a break.”

  “Can’t. You know that.” He met Royce’s gaze. “Though if you want to give me some help, this’d go a lot quicker.”

  The first few days combing through these messages, Trip had that help—two crewmen whom Kairn had assigned to assist him—but after the attack on Shadow, the marshal had pulled them away, pleading, a scarcity of resources. He wanted every available body and machine involved in the effort to keep tabs on the hostiles tracking them.

  Royce shook his head.

  “Sorry, Tucker. I wish we could, but…”

  Trip nodded grimly. “I understand.”

  “But speaking of help,” Royce went on, “Professor Brodesser feels his work on the cloaking device would also go a lot quicker if he had some. From you, specifically.”

 
; Trip took a second before responding to get the surge of anger he felt under control.

  It hadn’t been more than three hours, tops, since he’d told Brodesser he’d think about the man’s request. And the professor was already complaining?

  “He told you about that, did he?”

  “After I asked what progress he was making.”

  “Did he tell you I said I’d consider it?”

  “He did. And now I’m asking. Have you considered it?”

  “Hoshi and I need that cloaking device.”

  “Not until you find Enterprise. In the meantime…”

  “Like I said, I’m considering it.”

  “Why not let Brodesser at it now, let him find out exactly how it works, then—”

  “Because”—Trip got to his feet—“I’m not confident he can put it back together again if he takes it apart.”

  “You’re the one who told us he was a genius. You’ve changed your mind?”

  “The man I knew was a genius. This Brodesser, in case you’ve forgotten, is not—”

  The man I knew, Trip was going to say.

  Pain—a crippling, cramping pain—shot up the back of his right leg.

  He drew in a breath involuntarily and sat back down.

  “Tucker? You all right?”

  He managed a nod. “Give me a minute.”

  He massaged the back of his calf, trying to ease the pain, aware of Royce standing over him the whole time.

  “Should I call Doctor Trant?”

  “No. Not necessary.” Trip knew the pain would stop soon enough. He looked up at Royce again.

  “What I was saying—I don’t know this Brodesser, and I don’t trust him to pull the cloak apart. Period. You take that back to Kairn, and tell him I said so.”

  Royce’s eyes glittered for a second.

  “I’ll do that,” he said slowly. “And you do this, Tucker. Remember that Kairn and I haven’t forced you to do anything against your will from the day we rescued you. If you don’t want Brodesser to look at the cloak, he won’t.” He nodded toward the workstation. “Good luck finding your ship,” he said, then spun on his heel and was gone.

  Trip almost called out after him, but by the time he’d thought of something to say, the lieutenant was out of earshot.

  Terrific, he thought. First Brodesser, now Royce…

  I’m making friends everywhere I go today.

  His workstation beeped. He turned and saw that a fresh batch of intercepts had arrived at his terminal. Six hundred and twelve of them, to be precise.

  All at once, he didn’t feel up to sifting through them. Maybe Royce was right: maybe he did need a break.

  And operating on the misery loves company theory…

  He decided to visit the one person aboard Eclipse who was possibly even more unhappy than he was at the moment.

  Trip entered the decontamination chamber and pulled the door shut behind him.

  He stripped down to his skivvies, then dropped his uniform and gloves into a nearby receptacle and switched on the UV ray. Filtered light washed over him, eradicating every potential contaminant, germ, and speck of dirt. He put on a clean coverall and opened the inner door.

  Hoshi glanced up at his entrance.

  She did not look well.

  Worse than she had last night, when Trant had drawn blood from her and run a series of tests. Much worse. Her skin had taken on a slightly pale, transparent look that Trip had seen only on the very, very old—or the very, very ill. She looked brittle, as if she might crack at any second. All the weight she’d lost—more than Trip, he guessed, and she had much less to spare to start out with—didn’t help.

  Behind her, Trip could see the workstation Kairn’s men had moved in was still dark. It had probably sat all day, unused. Just as Hoshi had—still and silent, in this dimly lit room.

  He’d begged the marshal to let him take some of the intercepts from the bay back here, so that Hoshi could help in looking them over. So that she would have something to do. Kairn had turned him down. Prohibitively inefficient to make hard copies, he’d said, and too much effort to run the necessary conduit all the way from the bay to here. And here was where Hoshi had to stay.

  Because while Trip could walk freely through the ship—assuming he took a modicum of care to avoid crowded areas like the mess hall and the upper decks—Hoshi’s sensitivities were so acute that even a minute trace of the protein compounds they were allergic to would be enough to send her into anaphylactic shock. She’d almost died once before from such a reaction: she had slipped into a coma that had lasted two full days.

  This room was the only place on Eclipse truly safe for her. Eclipse’s crew had converted these quarters into a hermetically sealed environment, with atmosphere and plumbing supplied through specially designed filtration systems. It was a nice room, twice as big as the isolation room in Eclipse’s medical ward.

  And for all that, still a prison. Something Trip was conscious of every time he came here. And even more acutely aware of when he left.

  “Commander,” she said, looking up. “Any news?”

  “Nothing yet. But I’ve got a few hundred more of the day’s intercepts to go through still. We’ll find her, Hoshi.”

  She nodded. “I wish I could help.”

  There was nothing for Trip to do but nod. “I know. I wish you could too. In the meantime, how about something to eat?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second. Come on. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  “Commander…”

  Trip ignored her. Not just as her commanding officer, but her friend, the only one she had on board Eclipse, he felt responsible for making sure that Hoshi kept up her strength…as much as possible.

  He walked to the area of the room that had been designated a kitchen and opened the refrigerator. “Look at this. A veritable feast. What do you feel like?” he called over his shoulder. “Burgers? Sushi? Fried chicken?”

  There was no response.

  He turned. Hoshi had a smile—a very faint smile, but a smile nonetheless—on her face.

  “Ha, ha,” she said. “Very funny, sir.”

  “None of those to your taste?” Trip looked inside the refrigerator again. “How about pizza? I know you like pizza.”

  “Sure. That’d be fine.”

  “Pizza it is, then.” He pulled a container out of the refrigerator and set it down on the counter. Took down two plates, filled them, and brought them over to the table. Set one down in front of Hoshi, the other at the place opposite hers, and sat.

  She looked down at the plate, then back up at him.

  “It doesn’t look like pizza.”

  “Use your imagination.”

  “My imagination is not that vivid.”

  Trip glanced down at his plate.

  His imagination wasn’t that vivid either.

  She sighed. “I just wish there was something else. Anything else.”

  “Can’t argue with you there, but…consider the alternatives. What if there wasn’t anything at all we could eat?”

  She nodded. “I suppose we should be thankful.”

  And then she smiled.

  “What?”

  “Turo. That’s what he said. Always remember to be thankful.”

  “Who’s Turo?”

  “A man I knew, back on Earth.”

  “Turo?” Trip frowned. “What kind of name is that?”

  “He was Huantamos. Their chief, in fact.”

  “I hate to sound stupid, but…Huantamos?”

  Hoshi nodded. “An Indian tribe, down in the Amazon basin. I met him while I was working for a private foundation down there, helping catalog the languages of some of the more remote peoples.”

  “Really? I didn’t know about that.” Which wasn’t that surprising—there was a lot he didn’t know about Hoshi.

  “I spent six months with them.” She picked up her spoon and stared into the polished surface for a momen
t before continuing. “The Huantamos live in the densest part of the rain forest. They live off the land in the same way they’ve been doing the last thousand years. They want no contact with the outside world—at all.”

  “So how could you learn their language?”

  She smiled again. “Believe me, it wasn’t easy. Just getting to them, I had to walk kilometers with nothing but the clothes on my back. Even then, it took a long time to convince them to let me stay. Convince them that all I wanted was to learn their language, and then leave.”

  Trip nodded. Walking into the middle of the rain forest with nothing but the clothes she wore—that took some guts. Some survival skills as well, no doubt. Maybe he’d been underestimating Hoshi just a little bit these past couple years.

  “They took you in, though?”

  “Eventually. That was a whole…” She shook her head. “…mess, is what it was. The brujeira—tribe’s witch doctor is the closest approximation to his title—didn’t want me there. He thought my learning the language and taking it away was like stealing. Turo had to…convince him otherwise.”

  The stress she put on the word “convince” gave Trip the feeling that argument had progressed beyond talking into a confrontation a shade more…primitive, for lack of a better word.

  “Anyway,” Hoshi said, suddenly setting down her spoon, “my point is, we always ate meals—the dinner meal, at least—together. Some nights there wouldn’t be much more than this for everyone.” She nodded to the pisarko. “Before every meal, though, Turo always offered a prayer. Reminded us to be thankful for what we had.”

  “The Huantamos version of ‘grace.’ ”

  “Exactly,” she nodded.

  “My sister and I used to say grace, too.” The memory made him smile.

  “That’s funny?”

  “The way we did it, yeah.”

  Hoshi leaned forward expectantly. “Which was…?”

  Trip cleared his throat. “Good food, good meat. Good God, let’s eat.”

  For a second, the expression on her face didn’t change.

  And then Hoshi giggled.

  “Oh. That is funny,” she said, and giggled again. “Good meat.”

  The way she said those last two words—

  Trip snorted and burst into full-out laughter. Hoshi joined in at once, covering her mouth for a second to try and stop herself before giving in wholeheartedly.