Star Trek: TNG Indstinguishable From Magic

by David A. McIntee

  “We’re still being jammed,” Nog informed him. “And I’m having trouble filtering out the random interference coming out of the Infinite.”

  “EM interference is only to be expected—”

  “No, sir, it’s not just radiation and EM interference. There are actual signals, snatches of conversations . . . I think they’re signals passing through the system, which have been deflected through the Infinite.”

  Leah’s eyes widened, and her tone grew hushed and reverent. “Messages from the past and the future . . .” Scotty understood how intrigued she was, because he was equally interested. “I’ll record them. We might learn some things about both history and future technological developments.”

  Nog had lowered his ear to the tactical console, listening closely to the signals. “I don’t think we’ll learn much. It’s all just single words and sounds, out of context. Not complete sentences.”

  “There’s no harm in saving everything we can,” Leah said firmly.

  A similar conversation was taking place on Intrepid, where Barclay was also recording the signals. “Wow . . . Commander, look at this.”

  “Sensor readings, Reg?”

  “More than that. Fragments of signals passing through this system have been caught in the Infinite. Some of them are really old, I mean decades, or even centuries. A couple are even from the future.”

  “The future?”

  “Listen.”

  “. . . Stardate 72238.5 en route . . . Qap’la!. . . birthday greetings . . .”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t be listening to that, Reg.”

  “Yes we should!” Rasmussen piped up.

  “Shut up,” Barclay and La Forge both snapped, as one.

  La Forge suddenly caught something. “Wait, stop!”

  “What is it?”

  “I know it’s impossible, but I thought . . . I thought I just heard the IFF transponder code of the Hera.”

  “It’s not totally impossible, Commander. These are sensor returns that have traveled through time.”

  “That’s not the impossible part.” Geordi spooled back the transcript of recorded signals. “Look, I found it.”

  Barclay looked. “You’re right, that’s the Hera, but I don’t see what’s so impossible about it.”

  “Look at the date stamp,” Geordi urged. “Stardate 47221.3.”

  “So?”

  La Forge looked stunned. “So, the Hera’s last known transmission was on Stardate 47215.5. This signal dates from after she was reported lost.”

  In the brig, the now unarmed mercenaries were beginning to wake up. The Breen seemed to have been the most affected by the sonic field, and Bok thought that at least one of them was actually dead.

  When Bok first woke, his head was filled with an agonizing pain that quickly refocused itself into a raging fury. So now this La Forge, Picard’s lackey, would condemn Bok’s son! He should have killed the hew-mon in the first place. He should have killed all of them, including Rasmussen.

  “Bok . . .” It was Sloe. A hew-mon just like all the other child-killers. Bok turned on him, grabbing him by the throat and slamming him against the metal bunk.

  “We can re-take the bridge—” Sloe managed to gasp.

  Bok fought to control his anger, and eventually let his grip loosen. He released Sloe with a derisory shove. Remember your son, he told himself. Your son is all that matters, and his fate isn’t sealed yet.

  “Why bother?” Bok took a small electronic device from his pocket. “I took the liberty of preprogramming our course.” He pressed a control on the device. “Which is now locked in.”

  “We’re changing course,” the ensign at Intrepid’s helm said. He seemed to be struggling with the controls.

  “Change it back,” La Forge ordered.

  The ensign’s hands swept across the controls, and then he shrugged helplessly.

  “I tried. Helm isn’t responding.”

  Barclay hurried past. “Let me look at the navigational computer.”

  “Be my guest.”

  “We’re going to a preprogrammed course,” Barclay said after a moment.

  La Forge stood, looking over Barclay’s shoulder at the navigational computer. “Can you override the program?”

  Barclay’s hands were a blur across the console. “Yes . . . No. Every override I try looks like its going to work, but then . . . nothing,” he finished, his voice blending apology, anger, and frustration.

  “It must be locked in . . . Encrypted. Can you find a workaround?”

  “No, all the executables are being triggered from a secure separate unit. Most likely it’s hardwired into the main engine panel and activated remotely. Maybe even by a tricorder or communicator.”

  “Then . . .”

  “We’re programmed to follow the same course as that probe they sent through the Infinite. Whatever happens we’re on a one-way trip to 2162.”

  La Forge accepted the news with a fatalistic expression. “We need to rig the dilithium matrix to destabilize.”

  “Will you be making sure we’ve got time to get away?”

  “If it’s possible, Reg.”

  Barclay nodded somberly, then frowned in concentration. “What if we link the antimatter containment field to the gravimetric ambience. We could arrange for the engine to overload only under a specific gravitational condition, like entering the Infinite.”

  “Not a bad idea, but I think we can tweak it to make it even better. We’ll balance the containment field to collapse when the gravitational shear drops below a certain point.”

  “Below?”

  “When the ship tries to come out of the Infinite, if it ever goes in there.” He disappeared through the doors.

  Bok patted his pockets for his communicator, and used it. There was no barrier on Intrepid to signaling his ship. “Grak, are you there?”

  “Yes, Daimon.”

  “The Starfleet ship will try to prevent us from entering the Infinite. You must keep them occupied until we are gone.”

  “Their ship is powerful. I can’t guarantee that we can destroy it.”

  “That’s not as important as keeping it away from us.” Bok paused. “But first, can you beam us directly to the bridge of Intrepid?”

  “Which ‘us’?”

  “Sloe and myself. You can beam the rest of the men back to your ship.”

  “Yes, Daimon.”

  As the harsh red transporter beam coalesced into Bok and Sloe in the center of Intrepid’s bridge, the bridge crew looked up, tensing, ready to defend themselves. “You may as well stand down,” Bok said. “It was a brave effort, La Forge, but doesn’t make a difference now. Whatever happens, we’re on our way to 2162.”

  La Forge returned to the bridge and raised a disruptor to cover Bok and Sloe. “Deactivate whatever you’ve done.”

  Bok pursed his lips as if thinking, then gave a curt shake of the head. “I can’t do that.”

  “I mean it, Bok—”

  “When I say I can’t do that, I mean it physically cannot be done.” He tossed the remote control to La Forge. “See for yourself.” Geordi took it suspiciously, and saw that it was dead. “Once activated, the course is hardwired into the engines. You’d have to destroy them to stop our journey, and we made sure to disable the autodestruct systems when we boarded.”

  “What happens to us then?”

  “I don’t care. Ras-mew-son might have some ideas about what to do with you.” Bok gave a smile filled with false apology. “I’m afraid you missed your window to escape.”

  20

  Pursued by the marauder, Challenger swept up and around Intrepid, keeping the precious relic between themselves and Grak’s vessel as much as possible. Grak’s helmsman was pretty good, and they never quite snookered it for more than a few seconds at a time.

  “Captain,” Nog said, “I was thinking about how we dealt with the first ship, that Vor’cha?”

  “Odo’s favorite trick?” Scotty said. “Aye, that was a good one.”r />
  “The Intrepid doesn’t have shields,” Nog reminded him.

  “The hull can be polarized to scatter coherent energy transmissions,” Scotty pointed out. “It was intended to protect the ship from energy weapons, radiation storms, and so on, but it plays absolute hell with a transporter’s annular confinement beam. They wouldn’t even have to depolarize to operate the cloak, the way a shielded ship would have to drop their shields.”

  “They’ll have to polarize the hull plating to survive the radiation in the Infinite,” Nog said urgently, “but they haven’t yet.”

  Scotty looked up, a moment of hope frozen on his usually dour features. “If we can separate out our people from theirs . . .”

  “We can either beam our team home, or take a security detail over to retake the Intrepid.”

  “I don’t fancy the idea of trying to beam anyone through that mess. But of the two options, beaming our people home is the least dangerous.” Scotty rose. “I’m going to transporter room one. Let me know when you think you’ve got a fix on our people.

  Rasmussen wouldn’t have moved if he’d had time to think about it, but a lurch of the ship had sent him lunging in Bok’s direction anyway, and it was easier to go with the flow than try to back off and do something else. He swung wildly at Bok as he all but fell into the Ferengi. The blow didn’t connect as such, but it surprised Bok, and then the impact of the larger man’s stumble forced him back.

  “Welcher!” Bok snarled, and tried to backhand Rasmussen in the face. Due to their height difference, it only caught him in the chest. Rasmussen’s eyes widened in surprise and anger at the thudding blow. Rasmussen swung a roundhouse punch into Bok’s ear, and started fighting in earnest.

  Bok howled, and kicked out at Rasmussen’s knee, forcing him down. Enraged, Bok fought down the pain in his ear and focused on darting in to repeatedly punch Rasmussen in the gut. Bok was no warrior as such, but he hadn’t survived six years of prison without learning a few things about looking after himself.

  Rasmussen, on the other hand, had spent his years in Federation rehabilitation and re-education on a New Zealand farm learning nothing more physical than how to shear a sheep.

  La Forge, Barclay, and Sloe lunged forward, trying to pull the pair apart. “What’s the point?” Sloe shouted. “We’re all going the same way anyway!”

  If only he knew, Geordi thought.

  “This welcher betrayed us,” Bok shouted. “He left my son to die.”

  Rasmussen got in another kick at Bok. “You wanted to kill me!”

  In Challenger’s transporter room, Scotty was patching Nog’s tactical readout through to Carolan’s transport console. It looked promising, the Scotsman thought, as he saw the signal returns from eleven Starfleet combadges on the Intrepid. There was no guarantee that their owners were alive, but he wasn’t going to leave them behind.

  “There are four signals on the bridge,” Carolan said. “The rest are scattered throughout the ship.”

  “Beam the four from the bridge here. The others to transporter room three.”

  Carolan set up the targets, and swept a hand over the controls to energize the transporter.

  Bok felt a sudden tingling in his hands, and reflexively let go of Rasmussen. Everyone stumbled backward as if they’d let go of a spinning carousel. A whine of energy became louder, and the bridge was suddenly a brighter silver.

  Bok and Sloe looked at each other, then darted backward, away from the grasping hands of the Starfleeters.

  “No!” Bok shouted.

  “There’s interference from the Infinite,” Carolan warned. Scotty leaned past Carolan, adding his hands to the controls to try to stabilize the targeting sensors. “I’ve got them.”

  “Aye, and I intend to keep them!”

  One moment La Forge was in the middle of a melée, with everyone trying to get leverage over everyone else, and then suddenly he was staggering, as the calmer environment of the Challenger’s transporter room took over. He blinked, hardly daring to believe that he had truly been snatched from the Intrepid.

  Barclay, Balis, and Rasmussen were on the pad with him, looking around in a mixture of exhausted relief and sheer bafflement.

  “The others?” La Forge asked.

  “Transporter room three,” Scotty said, “and may I say welcome aboard.” His eyes narrowed as they fell upon Rasmussen. “Except to you. Balis, escort Mister Rasmussen here to the brig. Reg, go help Vol in engineering.”

  Scotty looked at Geordi. “The bridge awaits.” They jogged out of the transporter room. “What’s the situation over there?”

  “Bok and his scientific adviser are on a preprogrammed course for 2162. Reg and I sabotaged their warp core, but he’s got a pretty smart engineer named Sloe. I wouldn’t be too surprised if they’ve undone our sabotage.”

  “Then we’d better see where they’re going.”

  Intrepid was rattling and shaking like a mining cart, but Bok didn’t mind in the slightest. His son was going to be not just protected and safe, but greater than he ever would have been before. He would be the guardian of the Shadow Treasurers’ investments, and a rich man. He would never serve as a daimon on a dangerous expedition.

  Bok would, at last, have been the good father he always wished he had been.

  Sloe coughed, drawing Bok back to the present. “Our temporal course projection is deviating from the program,” he said apologetically.

  “How is that possible?” Bok lunged forward to examine the readings on the helm.

  “I don’t really know, to be honest,” Sloe admitted. “But it’s definitely happening. There’s a temporal variance of point zero four thr—”

  “What caused the variance?”

  “I’m not sure, but the only thing the program didn’t already take into account is the transporter beam when Challenger snatched the Starfleeters back.”

  “What exactly does that mean?”

  “It means we’re not going to the year we should be going to,” she said with a shrug.

  Bok’s eyes flashed dangerously. “What? How late will we be?”

  “Actually, not late at all. The variance is dragging us further back in time.”

  Bok straightened, excited. “How much further?”

  “Several decades at least, but the effect is exponential. The longer it lasts, the further back we’ll be going.”

  “That means, things will be more primitive, but our knowledge will be even further advanced . . .”

  Bok relaxed. In fact he felt a thrill of pleasure. “Grak,” he said into his communicator, “destroy the Challenger by whatever means takes your fancy. And farewell, faithful employee. I’m enabling access to your account dated from tomorrow.”

  Laughing, Bok sat back to enjoy the flight into yesterday.

  21

  Scotty and Geordi bolted from the turbolift and onto Challenger’s bridge. Geordi paused only long enough to grab Leah in a tight hug, to which she didn’t protest, and then dropped into the seat at ops. “I’ll need to know Intrepid’s precise heading.”

  “Patching it through now, Geordi,” Hunt said.

  La Forge glanced at the numbers, then did a double-take. “Hang on a minute, Scotty, these”—he tapped in the numbers he recalled from Intrepid’s helm, and a different course projecting was generated—“are the coordinates that Intrepid was heading for. They’ve changed.”

  Scotty quickly brought up a display of the Intrepid’s course, and rechecked the numbers. “You’re right, Geordi, it has changed. They’re not quite following their projected course in the wormhole.”

  “No, and it’s more than that, Scotty. They’re not following their programmed course.”

  “They’ve changed their program?”

  “Not a chance. Once it was engaged, there was no way even for Bok to change the program. Which means it must be an external factor that’s affecting their course.”

  “The gravimetric shear?” Qat’qa offered.

  “Their program take
s the natural forces in the Infinite into account.”

  Scotty snapped his fingers. “The transporter beam . . .”

  “What? How?”

  “It’s the only other external factor. I don’t know how it could have happened, but it has to be something to do with the transporter.”

  La Forge looked at the course projection on his console, and the spiral loop around the cosmic string for some of its length. “It looks like it made her get a shade closer to the string, which means she’ll take longer to come out of the closed timelike curve . . . She’ll be further back in the past! Able to make more changes.”

  “Aye, maybe . . .” Scotty seemed surprisingly sanguine about the whole idea, but La Forge couldn’t take it so calmly.

  “There’s no maybe about it, Scotty. The further back Bok goes, the more time any ripples from the changes he makes will have to take wider effect.”

  “Only if he can get out of the CTC at a point where he can do enough harm . . .” An evil glint appeared in Scotty’s eye.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The transporter! If a beamout affected his temporal course, then maybe locking on the annular confinement beam to the Intrepid will keep him stuck for even longer.”

  “That’s a pretty thin idea.”

  “Not at all. We just saw the transporter beam have exactly that effect when we beamed you out.”

  “Okay, well, it’s the only idea we’ve got anyway.”

  “That’s the spirit, laddie.” Scotty frowned. “But we’ll need a stable position on the edge of the Infinite, and they won’t want to give us that . . .”

  “Separate the ship,” La Forge said simply.

  “Captain,” Grak’s helmsman called. “Something strange is happening to Challenger. It’s as if she’s breaking up.”

  Grak felt a moment of exultation. This meant a handsome bonus! “Show me!”

  A distant, magnified view of the Challenger appeared in the main viewing tank. The huge saucer that made up the bulk of Challenger was arcing away from the door-wedge form of the secondary hull. Grak’s elation vanished in a heartbeat. “Idiot! It’s not breaking up, it’s separating into two vessels.” He had all but forgotten that many Federation starships could perform such a maneuver.