Star Trek: TNG Indstinguishable From Magic

by David A. McIntee

  Scotty leaned forward. “It canna, in normal space.”

  “I sense a ‘but’ coming,” Hunt said.

  “But . . . in some of the quantum slipstream experiments, we found that slipstream matrices intersectin’ a gravity well in subspace sometimes created the opposite or the reflection of a well.”

  “A gravity peak?” Barclay asked.

  “Right. We’ve nicknamed it a subspace gravity spike.” Leah leaned forward and adjusted the hologram. The ghostly image came to life, stretching upward in a mirror-image of the gravity well. “An object at the peak of the gravity spike will experience accelerated time.”

  “In the case of Intrepid, two millennia . . .” La Forge nodded understandingly.

  “Exactly,” Brahms said. “And if we project a course between where she was lost, and later found, I’m willing to bet we’ll find a large gravity well at some point, probably closer to her original position than here. But that’s not the real mystery. This effect was discovered during the development of the slipstream drive. And it happened to Intrepid two hundred years earlier.”

  La Forge froze, his features settling into a granite mask. “There were no slipstream drive experiments in the twenty-second century.”

  Scotty grunted. “Not by any known Alpha Quadrant species. Nobody had technology at that level back then . . .” he said, pausing for emphasis, “that we know of.”

  “But there are a lot of people we don’t know . . .”

  “Ye’ve hit the nail on the head, Geordi. That’s what Starfleet is interested in, and that’s why they sent Challenger.” Scotty cleared his throat. “Where did Intrepid originally disappear?”

  “In the vicinity of star system G-231,” Qat’qa reported.

  “That’s a fair distance from here,” Hunt pointed out.

  “About four hundred light-years.” Leah tapped a point on the display, which obligingly wobbled and flashed. “I thought as much. On the other side of the black hole in the Bolus Reach. It’s only about six parsecs from G-231.”

  “It could never have drifted so far,” Hunt said, “even in two thousand years. It would take millions of years for an object to drift even the tiniest fraction of that distance.”

  “I agree,” La Forge said. “But it didn’t. It would be nice to know how.”

  “And what about afterwards?” Nog asked. “Are you suggesting that Intrepid somehow negotiated its way through a black hole, and out the other side? That’s insane.”

  “The ship’s existence is insane,” Vol countered. “The gravitational stresses should have torn her apart.”

  “Perhaps Starfleet built them out of sterner stuff in those days,” Qat’qa said facetiously.

  “No, lass,” Scotty said, “they didn’t. The NX-class was ancient history when I was chief engineer on the Enterprise, but we still had all the blueprints on file.”

  “We still do, actually,” Leah reminded him.

  “Aye, but in those days we still read through the old files now and again. There were enough old ships still around, dating that far back, that we might run into.”

  “Not so much nowadays,” Barclay said.

  “Not with twenty-second century ships, but Starfleet was still using the old Miranda- and Oberth-class ships until a decade ago, and they were from my era. And the Hood is still in service, isn’t she?” Scotty asked.

  “Yes. And private owners can run ships of any age, if they can prove they’re spaceworthy,” Vol stated.

  Barclay nodded. “And the Klingons still use the B’rel-class Bird-of-Prey, and there are a few K’t’ingas left in service.”

  La Forge sat back, staring at the hologram. “The Intrepid couldn’t have flown through a black hole. It’s physically impossible to survive falling into the singularity . . .”

  “Unless it’s a rotating black hole,” Barclay suggested, “and they somehow managed to orbit the singularity and slingshot back out.”

  “Impossible,” Leah said flatly.

  “Similar things have happened,” La Forge said.

  “Aye, lad,” Scotty said with a grin, “the old Enterprise that I served on survived two slingshots round a black star, but that was only Warlock Station’s Type 3 singularity, not something with the gravitational power of a true black hole.”

  “But if their orbit was far enough out?” asked Barclay.

  “Which it couldna be, lad. You’re forgetting the big differences between the Connie-class and the NX-class: Firstly, the materials the Intrepid is constructed of wouldn’t have survived the torsional stresses, and nor, for that matter, would warp five be quick enough to get the job done. Secondly, and even more importantly, the crew of the Enterprise were alive and at their posts, whereas the crew of the Intrepid were already all dead.”

  “Do we know that for a fact?” asked Qat’qa.

  “That’s what my forensic technicians will attempt to confirm,” Ogawa said. “The walls will speak for themselves.”

  “I appreciate that the crew died instantly due to a catastrophic failure of the inertial dampeners. What I’m asking is whether that failure couldn’t have been caused by the slingshot effect. You did just say, sir,” Barclay said, “that Intrepid couldn’t have taken the stresses of such a maneuver. And we know that something gave.”

  “I didn’t just say her systems couldna have taken the strain, Mister Barclay; I said the materials she was built out of couldn’t. Her actual frame and hull would have broken up like an eggshell in a food blender. No, the Intrepid did not fly through a black hole.” Scotty paused for a moment, thinking about the state of the ship they were about to visit. It was old, it was fragile, but it could still be made to get back up and running again. It sounded like himself, and the thought amused him. “All right, so when we arrive, the engineering team wants to be looking for signs of having encountered a subspace gravity inversion, and slipstream. That sounds like a good place to start, so I’ll leave it up to all you to get it seen to.” He stood. “I’ll be seeing if I can arrange a look at G-231 while we’re at it.”

  As everyone filed out of the briefing room, La Forge ended up following Qat’qa through the door back onto the bridge. “I wonder how impossible surviving a slingshot through a black hole would really be with current technology,” the Klingon pilot said thoughtfully.

  “Personally, I’d rather never find out, if it’s all the same to you,” Barclay volunteered as he walked past them, before disappearing into the turbolift.

  Qat’qa continued, “I understand the mechanics of the slingshot effect, and I’ve studied its use in the past. It’s quite rare, but effective.”

  “How rare?” La Forge asked as they walked down to their stations.

  “Captain Scott has survived the process half a dozen times or so. I believe that’s still a record.” Her eyes took on a hungry gleam. “I have set many flight records in the Empire, but one such as that eludes me.”

  “But you’d like to try?”

  “Or to make an achievement of equal stature. An elusive achievement is a challenge, and I have always risen to challenges.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, I think.” As La Forge cast an eye over the status displayed on the ops console, Scotty tapped him on the shoulder and nodded toward the ready room door. Geordi followed him through, and Scotty sat behind his desk. La Forge was amused to note that where Picard used to have a fish tank, Scotty had a shield and a couple of claymore swords.

  “Don’t worry about Qat’qa,” Scotty began. “She’s ambitious, stubborn, and, well, you know how Klingons are about takin’ on a challenge—but she’s not stupid, and she’s not crazy.”

  “I’ve seen her piloting,” Geordi said, in a tone that suggested he wasn’t so sure.

  “Ye don’t get to be the most decorated test-pilot in anyone’s service by being stupid or crazy. Aye, ye need to be crazy enough to want to fly untried contraptions in the first place, but you also have to be stable and professional enough to take note of everything, and to take a ship to
its limits without wrecking it and wastin’ all the time and effort that was put into making the beastie to begin with.”

  “She’s the most-decorated helm in the Empire?” La Forge was suitably impressed.

  “Test-pilot, yes. I dare say there are a lot of other Klingons with more decorations for service in battle, but none for trying out new vessels and new maneuvers.”

  “So how did you manage to get her into the exchange program? I’d have thought she’d be too valuable to the Klingons, and have too many state secrets in her head.”

  “I expect she does, but I have a little influence with one of two Klingon families on the High Council. Maybe not as much as Captain Picard, but I’ve done my bit. I was there at the Khitomer Conference. As a matter of fact, I shot the would-be assassin who was trying to shoot Chancellor Azetbur.”

  La Forge nodded. “I remember reading about that.”

  “Her house still remembers me. And then I also ran into Qat’qa’s paternal grandparents once or twice, and their House has this view that, while the Enterprise crew might have been enemies at times, we were worthy and honorable enemies.”

  La Forge thought of Worf’s attitudes, and found himself nodding again. “I understand.”

  “Right, now let me see what I can find out about G-231 . . .”

  When La Forge had gone, Scotty keyed his companel and hailed another engineer/captain. After a few moments, a very pretty black-haired Hispanic woman appeared on screen, sitting in the center seat of a starship’s bridge. Scotty put on his most winning smile. “Captain Gomez, it’s always a pleasure.”

  She grinned. “Likewise, Scotty.”

  “Sonya, I was just wondering whether you’re free to do me a wee favor?”

  “How ‘wee’ a favor did you have in mind?”

  “How soon d’ye think the da Vinci could reach star system G-231?”

  Sonya Gomez looked behind her, to where a stocky Tellarite was consulting a screen. “About eighteen hours,” the Tellarite said.

  “That sounds good enough, lass.”

  “What did you have in mind for us to do there?”

  “I need a full subspace scan of the whole system. Look for anything . . . odd.”

  “It’d help if you could define ‘odd’ a little more specifically.”

  “Wormholes, subspace distortion fields, gravimetric distortions . . . Anything that might indicate the use of slipstream technology—”

  “Okay, that’s pretty clear—”

  “—two hundred years in the past.”

  Her eyes widened. “Two hundred years? You must be joking.”

  “Everythin’ leaves a trace o’ something, Sonya. I just have the suspicion that if there’s anything there, you’ll know it when you find it.”

  “All right, we don’t have anything that’s a priority, and you did put me in this seat. I’ll get back to you when we arrive at G-231.”

  “Thanks, lass. I owe you one.”

  “Single malt this time, Scotty. Da Vinci out.”

  The Challenger dropped out of warp ten thousand kilometers from the buoy that the Enterprise had left behind to mark Intrepid’s position, and sailed the rest of the way on impulse power.

  Everyone who could think of a reason to be on the bridge was there for the first sight of Intrepid. Ogawa stood out of the way in a corner, while Barclay kept trying to look over people’s shoulders at what they were doing. Even Vol had squeezed himself into a turbolift and come up on the pretense of running a diagnostic on the bridge’s engineering console.

  Qat’qa turned in her seat. “We are at the location marked by the Enterprise, Captain Scott. Intrepid is fifteen kilometers from the marker buoy.”

  “Right, then,” Scotty said. “Let’s have a look at the grand old lass, eh?”

  Beside him, Hunt touched a control on his armrest, and the main viewer switched to a closer view of the NX-class vessel. La Forge had already seen it, but he got a thrill out of seeing Scotty’s expression react to the sight. “There she is, just the way I left her.”

  “Ah, she’s a beauty to be sure,” Scotty breathed. “It’s fair enough to go to the fleet museum and see one of these, but out here . . . Out here it’s a whole different ball game, isn’t it?”

  “Kind of makes you feel that you’re part of that era,” Geordi agreed. “It’s like the difference between seeing a rare animal in captivity or in its natural environment.”

  Brahms stood and walked over to the main viewer, resting a hand on the back of La Forge’s seat. “We’ve no idea how long it might take to get life support back up on Intrepid, or even if it’s actually possible at all. So we’ll dock our runabouts and shuttles at the other airlocks to use as base camps for the work crews, as well as a source of power for any systems we can get working.”

  Geordi nodded. “Once the breaches are repaired, we should be able to use a shuttle’s life support system to re-pressurize the Intrepid.”

  “That’ll be useful,” Hunt agreed. “The sooner the away team doesn’t have to be wearing EV suits, the happier—and less clumsy—they’ll be.”

  “Exactly what I’m thinking,” Leah added.

  “First things first,” Ogawa said. “We need to recover the remains of the crew before life support is restored.”

  “That could take a while.”

  “It could, but it’s going to be easier and more hygienic to remove the remains before an atmosphere can act as a biological or bacterial vector. When that happens, the material adhering to the wall will begin to decay, and, leaving aside any issues of contamination, it will stink.”

  “We’ll send the runabouts Clyde and Thames to the main locks on either side of the saucer,” Hunt said. “We’ve already swapped out the standard mission modules for workshops.”

  Leah nodded. “And if we can get Intrepid’s power grid to where it’ll actually carry an energy supply, we can use the warp cores from the runabouts to start it up.”

  Ogawa came around to address Scotty. “Captain, if the medical forensic team can make use of one of the runabouts . . .”

  “Agreed,” Scotty said. “Use the Clyde, Doctor. Concentrate on recovering the remains from the bridge and engineering first. That’ll help Mister La Forge and his team get to work sooner.”

  “That sounds most sensible to me anyway. The three locations with the most jumbled up remains will be the bridge, engineering, and the crew’s mess. The biomatter from those locations will need the longest time to separate out into individual remains. The remains in the cabins should belong to no more than four people per room.”

  “Right, then, the crew mess will be your third priority. We shouldn’t need to use it at all, of course, so it’s less of a priority from an engineering viewpoint.”

  Ogawa nodded, and left to prepare to go across to the other ship. La Forge looked up at Brahms. “She’s a pretty sight, isn’t she?”

  “Pretty, but very out of date. Just look at what passes for her nacelle radiators. . . . It’s a product of a bygone age that’s rightfully bygone.”

  “Oh, come on, Doc,” Vol protested. “Those are classics. Proper, solid, hardwired technology.”

  “Which broke down as often as not. It belongs in the museum that we’ll put it in, where we can look at such primitivism in a safe environment.”

  “And be relieved that starship construction and design has moved on since that one was built,” Hunt added.

  In Nelson’s, Guinan stood by the huge forward windows and looked out on the Intrepid. It was an era through which she had lived, but the ship wasn’t one she had any familiarity with. That said, she tended not to take too much notice of the exteriors of ships, and the interiors tended to blend together after the first couple of centuries.

  She heard a wistful sigh a few feet away, and turned. There were only a couple of other people in the lounge area, mostly looking tired after finishing a long shift, but one person was leaning forward, his hands pressed against the windows. He was looking at Intrepid with
the expression of a man who had returned to his childhood home and found a favorite old toy still in a corner. It was a mix of amazement, wonder, and infinite sadness at what had been lost or left behind.

  She slipped closer to him, and he didn’t notice. “You must be Rasmussen.” The man started, looked like he was about to snarl at her, then caught himself.

  “Uh, yes. Berlinghoff Rasmussen’s the name. Have we met?”

  “On the Enterprise. Nobody else would be looking at Intrepid with your expression.”

  “Nostalgia, eh? It’s a wonderful thing.”

  “Actually I wasn’t thinking nostalgia. Nostalgia’s a good feeling that people like to seek out because it reminds them of the good times. You look more . . . sad. As if you’d lost something.”

  Rasmussen turned his gaze upon her, and flashed a very charming smile. “You’re a very perspicacious lady, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “I don’t mind at all.”

  “Oh!” Rasmussen brightened, and gestured toward the bar. “Maybe a drink for the lady . . . ?”

  “I have one already.” It was a long time since a criminal offered to buy her a drink, and that was another nostalgic feeling. “I do have a certain nostalgia for the era, though.”

  “Oh, you’d have liked it, I think. It was a good time back on Earth.” He seemed to realize something. “Are you from Earth yourself?”

  She shook her head. “But I’ve been there a lot. Not during the twenty-second century, though. I was busy elsewhere.” His expression momentarily froze, so she breezed past the moment by asking, “You must remember a lot about the missions of these ships.”

  “Well, not the classified material, but I remember the news reports, yes.”

  Guinan looked across to the door as La Forge entered Nelson’s and made a bee-line for Rasmussen. “I’ve been looking for you,” he began, then caught himself. “Do you remember any news reports about the disappearance of the Intrepid?”

  Rasmussen shrugged. “I was a civilian, after all, and not really a party to Starfleet’s logs and records. At least not until they were released to the public.”