by Rick Barba
On the flight up, the team had received a live video briefing from a simulated Mission Control. The dour-looking flight controller, Commander Jack Stetmann, appeared on-screen and reported the following sequence of “events” to brief them:
• Three days ago, Starfleet Intelligence intercepted a signal from a deep-space object of substantial mass.
• A patrol craft had tracked the coordinates to an active space platform of advanced design.
• Attempts to communicate with the facility got no response.
• A security recon team discovered a simple airlock, then entered and established an outpost.
• Preliminary visual and sensor scans revealed what appeared to be a vast alien ecosystem.
“A floating greenhouse,” the commander had called it. “We’ve designated it Tanika Station. Captain Kirk, your team is being deployed as a science unit for observation and sampling. Questions?”
Kirk said, “Any sentient life-forms? Inhabitants?”
“Negative.”
“Anything moving?” asked Kirk.
“Negative. Other than water.”
Kirk checked his notes. “Breathable atmosphere?”
“It appears so,” answered Commander Stetmann. “No noxious gases, just oxygen-based gases. However, the security team conducted no tests for microcontaminants.”
“Noted,” said Kirk. “Aside from the airlock, any other mechanical systems evident?”
“None visible, Captain.”
Kirk noted his phrasing, and checked his notes again. “Artificial gravity?”
Stetmann nodded. “There is gravity plating in the hull.”
Kirk smiled. “So we’re looking at a walk in the park.”
Stetmann’s face remained inscrutable. “Not sure what you mean, Captain.”
“Tanika Station appears to be an uninhabited alien conservatory of sorts,” said Kirk. “Like an arboretum. A park.”
“So it seems,” replied Commander Stetmann.
Glorak leaned toward the screen. “Do you recommend side arms at the ready, Commander?”
“Phasers are always recommended in alien settings, Cadet,” said Stetmann.
The EVA was simple and uneventful.
A few quick bursts of the backpack jets propelled all five cadets to the airlock at the far end of the docking bay. A single handle opened the door to the interior chamber, which was big enough for a platoon of twenty cadets. Inside, another handle closed and pressurized the airlock. Kirk immediately found himself standing on the floor.
“Ah, the graviton plate automatically activates,” said Glorak.
Seconds later, the team stepped out into Tanika Station. None of them were quite prepared for what they saw.
“Mother of god,” said Cadet Marcus.
Nobody else spoke.
The small clearing just beyond the airlock doorway was a like an elevated platform. It offered a panoramic view of the station’s interior, which was shaped like a vast oval bowl. The space was at least a mile long, three football fields wide, and as tall as a fifteen-story building. It dropped in toward the center, where a silver lake glittered at the bottom of the bowl.
Kirk raised a digital optics scope to his visor and surveyed the terrain. Around the oval, about a dozen narrow streams flowed down the sides of the landscape bowl—the water originated from spouts low in the station wall at the top. The streams wound through lush jungle vegetation before emptying into the central lake. A system of narrow walking trails crisscrossed over the streams and one another. Above, two wide solar strips ran the length of the ceiling, casting a full-spectrum glow. The colors were remarkably vibrant.
“This is . . . beyond words,” he murmured.
One of the spouts gushed from the wall just thirty yards from the airlock door. A dirtlike path led from the airlock down a gentle slope, then curved along the running stream.
“Is that actually water?” asked Glorak.
“My scanner says yes,” said Braxim, holding up his tricorder. “No surprise, really. Water is one of the most abundant molecules in the universe and seems essential for any living system.”
“These all flow into that central lake,” said Kirk, pointing.
“Incredible,” said Glorak.
Kirk took in the stunning panorama one more time, then turned his mind to the action plan. “Let’s keep the helmets on for now, gentlemen,” he said. “Mr. Raynor, take some air readings, please.”
“Right, Captain.” Raynor unpacked his tricorder, added an attachment, and started running scans.
Braxim gazed around in wonder.
“This place is rich with life!” he exclaimed. “You can just feel it!”
Kirk said, “It feels you too, Mr. Braxim. And it might not like you.”
Braxim held up his arms and turned around in a circle.
“I am no threat!” he called out.
Kirk had to smile at that.
Tanika Station did indeed teem with life, albeit strange life. A cool, humid breeze blew through the landscape. It felt like an English garden—natural and a bit wild, not the orderly rows of foliage found in a typical greenhouse.
“Sensors indicate good air composition, no sign of microbial pathogens,” called Raynor. “Nothing bad to breathe, Captain.”
“Okay, I’ll give it a go,” said Kirk.
He unlocked his helmet and lifted it an inch or so, breathing in the Tanika Station air. It was moist, pungent, and fragrant. After inhaling shallowly twenty times and feeling no dizziness or other effects, Kirk removed the helmet and tried a few deep breaths.
“I think it’s good,” he said. “Raynor, keep your hat on for a while, just in case.”
“Aye, Captain,” replied Raynor.
Glorak, Marcus, and Braxim pulled off their helmets and clipped them to their utility belts. The team spent the next twenty minutes setting up a rudimentary base camp with lab equipment near the airlock door. When they finished that task, Raynor popped off his helmet too.
Kirk slung a pack over his shoulders. He stepped to the trailhead. Ahead, the colors were so vivid, Kirk was reminded of a Matisse watercolor.
“Okay, gentlemen,” he said. “Let’s move to Phase One recon.”
Uhura stared in horror at the monitor on her lab work-station. On-screen, a black swarm was imploding an amoeba proteus.
“Those . . . things were in my nose and throat?” she said in disgust.
“Yes,” said McCoy.
“And you say they can go anywhere?” she said.
“Almost,” said McCoy.
“We were able to contain these specimens in a quantum field chamber,” said Chandar.
“Well that’s nice,” said Uhura.
McCoy nodded. “I find them just as disturbing and creepy as you do, Cadet,” he said. “But now you can see how the Doctor, damn his name, could remove Human internal organs without incisions or any other sign of trauma. See, he didn’t actually remove the organs. He directed these little bastards to enter the victim’s body and eat them.”
Uhura just stared at the monitor. A flash of anger lit her dark eyes.
“That’s beyond evil,” she said.
“I fully agree,” said McCoy.
“But how, exactly, does this information help my translation research?” asked Uhura.
Dr. Chandar froze the video screen.
He said, “Data extracted from the nanite swarm indicates that its place of origin is deep in the Delta Quadrant. No doubt this mysterious serial killer is a Delta alien as well.”
Uhura considered this for a moment. Then she said, “You’re suggesting that the killer might be speaking in some language indigenous to the Delta Quadrant?”
“Correct,” said Chandar.
She shook her head. “Doctor, the Federation has never had any contact, direct or indirect, with any Delta race or entity. Thus I’ve had absolutely no experience with any Delta language.”
“Actually, you have,” said Chandar, smiling.
“The Xanno emigrated from Delta space,” said Chandar.
Uhura gave him a skeptical look. “I’ve heard that, but I assumed it was just folklore,” she said. “A creation myth.”
“Tell that to a Xanno,” said McCoy.
He pulled a sheet of paper from a folder and set it on the console in front of Uhura.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“It’s a highly classified, Priority Three level study of Xanno history compiled by Starfleet Intelligence prior to admission of New Xannon into the United Federation of Planets in 2229,” said McCoy. “You’ll find that the evidence for the Delta origin of the Xannon race is pretty definitive.”
Uhura scanned the document.
“Okay,” she said. “But I still don’t get how that helps me. There must be hundreds of thousands of Delta Quadrant languages. Why would this alien killer know Xanno, especially if the Xanno left that quadrant more than four hundred fifty years ago? Seems like a long shot.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” said McCoy. He pulled another sheet of paper from his folder and handed it to Uhura.
“And what’s this?” she asked.
“Eyewitness accounts of the attack on Cadet Gaila from the police report,” said McCoy. “Note the parts I highlighted. Both Jim Kirk and Braxim describe the same thing: the odd behavior of the so-called ‘black fog’ that suddenly rose up around Braxxy. That was undoubtedly a nanite swarm. And both cadets believed that the killer was speaking to Braxim when he made the statement recorded in the 911 call.”
Uhura’s eyes widened. “Yes, that is very interesting.”
Dr. Chandar nodded vigorously. “And I find it quite interesting that the swarm rejected Cadet Braxim.”
“Rejected?” said Uhura.
“Yes!” said Chandar excitedly. “Given what we know of the swarm’s inquisitive tendencies, it seems most unusual that it made no attempt to enter our Xannon friend and . . . well, conduct its research, as it were.”
“Yes, it looks like the good Doctor gave Braxxy a quick scan and then spoke to him,” said McCoy.
“As if in recognition!” cried Chandar, rubbing his hands.
“Possibly,” said Uhura. “Of course, Braxim didn’t recognize the spoken language either. So it wasn’t Xanno.” Her eyes lit up. “Or at least, not Xanno as it’s usually spoken.”
McCoy noted her sudden enthusiasm.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Uhura started punching buttons on the console. She said, “My last scan for Romulan sonic fragments produced some match results. It seems possible that the recorded phrases are actually scrambled bits of Romulan, at least in part. But we could only match fragments to about sixty percent of the first phrase. And of course, they made no sense in the order they were spoken.”
“But now you’ll scan for Xanno fragments too?” said Dr. Chandar, grasping what she was thinking.
“Computer,” said Uhura to the console. “Let’s look for fragments in Sample One again. This time run it with subroutine XAX-zero-one, please.”
“Acknowledged,” said the computer.
The console made a rapid series of ping! sounds. Uhura smiled big at McCoy and Chandar.
“Each ping is a match,” she said.
“Thirty-one matches found,” said the console.
“Okay, show us the original spectrogram, please,” said Uhura.
A graph filled with jagged white lines popped up on-screen. It was the digital sound-picture Uhura had created from the 911 recordings of the killer’s spoken words.
“Those white frequency bands are the killer’s words to Cadet Braxim,” she said. “Computer, superimpose the Romulan sonic fragment matches onto this graph, please.”
About two-thirds of the white bands turned red.
“The red bands are the parts that appear to be fragments of Romulan words,” said Uhura. “Computer, now superimpose the Xanno matches as well.”
All of the remaining white bands turned blue, and many of the red bands turned purple where the red and blue overlapped.
“Wow,” said McCoy.
“Okay,” said Uhura, looking at the spectrogram. “As you can see, the Romulan and Xanno speech is not only fragmented, but also scrambled together in overlapping tracks.” She shook her head in frustration. “Unscrambling that mess would be like decrypting a coded military communiqué. I just don’t have the computing power to do that.”
McCoy and Chandar exchanged a look.
“Cadet,” said McCoy. “I think it’s time you met the Cheetah.”
Team Delta’s Phase One game plan was to simply explore, observe, and record. The original consensus had been to allot just one hour for this activity. But the team quickly tripled that time based on the sheer size of the specimen collection field.
Those first few hours in Tanika Station flew by fast. As Kirk jotted notes on his e-pad near a stand of spiraling lemon-yellow shoots that curled upward into spectacular interlocking patterns, he glanced over at Braxim. The big Xanno sat raptly next to a low murmuring waterfall.
“I could live here, Jim,” he said, watching water flow over a stacked jumble of smooth rocks.
Kirk closed the e-pad. “Maybe that’s possible,” he said.
Braxim smiled. “How so, my friend?”
Kirk gazed up at the spiraling yellow plants.
“Braxxy, this platform doesn’t exist just to test a handful of lowly Starfleet cadets once a year,” he said. “It’s clearly some sort of advanced bioscience facility.”
“It is a magnificent space!” Braxim boomed. He pounded his great barrel chest a couple of times for emphasis. “If I could work here every day, I would consider life a daily blessing.”
Kirk smiled, thinking about Hannah. “Yeah, I know someone else who’d share that sentiment.” It wasn’t the first time that Hannah had popped into his head. It seemed he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
Nearby, Marcus was snapping holo-photos of a patch of what looked like nubby red ice plant growing on the stream’s bank. The camera flashes were as bright as lightning, and Kirk winced. Not far from Marcus, Glorak stood calf-deep in the rushing stream.
“I’ve never seen such dense moss colonies,” called Glorak. “Look at those finely articulated sporophytes over there.” He pointed toward a cluster of moss capsules, all brilliant orange and fire red. “Look at the colors!”
Kirk glanced over at Marcus. “What’s your take on this place, Marcus?”
Marcus adjusted his camera lens. “I grew up near the Olympic peninsula, west of Seattle,” he said. “It’s a temperate rain forest—a jungle, but cool, not tropical.” He aimed at the spiraling yellow plants. “This place is a temperate rain forest on steroids.”
Just up the trail, Raynor waved his tricorder scanner around the paddlelike fronds of a bright green fern shuddering in the breeze.
Kirk called to him. “What about you, Raynor?”
“I don’t know, man,” replied Raynor. “Something about this place feels weird.”
Kirk had the same feeling, especially as they’d explored lower into the bowl and gotten closer to the central lake. A basin of sediment surrounded it, and the air smelled more pungent the closer they got to the silvery water.
“It does feel different here,” grunted Glorak from the stream.
“Yeah,” whispered Marcus loudly. “It feels like we’re being watched.”
Kirk agreed. Somewhere, fifteen or twenty vigilant test administrators and Starfleet senior officers were observing and logging their every move and spoken word. But this feeling was more than that. To Kirk, it almost felt as if the environment of Tanika Station was watching them.
After three hours of careful observing, imaging, and note-taking—all the while following Starfleet science directives to the letter—Team Delta climbed back to base camp to prepare for their Phase Two specimen-collection activities. As the cadets unpacked their science kits, Kirk remembe
red Hannah’s gift, the botanist’s eyepiece. He pulled it from his hip pouch and slung the lanyard around his neck.
“We Tellarites are deeply fond of nature,” said Glorak as he loaded items into a pack.
“Yes, it’s an excellent place to root for truffles,” said Marcus.
Glorak laughed. He was always good-natured about the endless pig jokes people tossed his way.
“Well,” he replied, “speaking of that, I suggest we start by rooting in that central basin around the lake. The growth patterns there are unusual, and the specimens promise to be quite curious.”
“Yeah, there’s some wacky stuff down there,” agreed Marcus.
“Good plan,” said Kirk. “That basin is clearly the nexus of this environment.”
The team set off down the path. As Kirk trekked between rows of bizarre periwinkle horsetails waving in the artificial breeze, he felt Hannah’s eyepiece swinging on his neck. He wondered how she would be running this show. As they descended into the basin surrounding the lake, Kirk noticed that the pungent, almost metallic smell was now stronger.
Up ahead, Glorak suddenly stopped, looking confused.
“What are these?” he asked. He turned to Kirk.
Glorak stood next to a pair of shaggy plants, gnarled with yellow vines and hung with multicolored, fruitlike pods. They grew from a mound of black, sludgy silt on the stream bank. Each stood about three feet tall and spread equally wide. Each was a remarkably complex coil of shapes and colors.
“Wow,” said Marcus, unpacking his camera.
“Those weren’t here before,” said Raynor, rubbing his crew-cut hair in a move Kirk had come to recognize as a stress tick. He glanced off to the left. “Look, there’s more.”
Sure enough, several dozen of the bright, twisted plants grew along the lakeshore. Some were bigger and more colorful, featuring more knots of tissue, bulb, and vine—clearly in a more advanced state of growth. But others were no bigger than small houseplants.
“They’re beautiful,” said Braxim.
