Star Trek: TNG Indstinguishable From Magic

by David A. McIntee

  “No, but . . .” The tactical officer looked up, her face a mask of puzzlement. “There is some similarity to slipstream spoor, but far beyond anything we know is possible. There’s something else. The computer reports that any sightings of this type are to be reported to the High Council immediately.”

  K’Vadra thought about that for a moment. Perhaps there was some kind of new Romulan ship, one with its own slipstream drive . . . That would certainly be of great importance to the High Council.

  “Report it, then.” He turned to the helmsman. “Return to our patrol course.”

  La Forge didn’t know who to expect when his door chimed. “Come in,” he called. He was off duty and in civvies, ready to take Leah to Nelson’s for a proper meal, but he had a few minutes to spare while she got ready.

  Qat’qa entered, proffering a padd. She was the last person he would have expected. “I received this from the High Council. It is a report of an attack made by a Bird-of-Prey upon a supposed vessel in Klingon space. Scans made at the time show signs of the subspace distortion we’re searching for.”

  “Why did they pass it on to you personally, rather than forwarding it through channels?”

  “Because family is quicker than bureaucracy.”

  “I can’t argue with that. Thanks, Qat’qa.”

  It was another two days before the official version report from the Klingon High Council filtered through to the Challenger. Carolan brought it to La Forge’s attention in his ready room, during the regular morning status meeting.

  “What’s this?” he asked, when she handed him the communications file.

  “A collation of reports of trans-slipstream wakes detected in various parts of the Alpha Quadrant over the past few weeks. That Klingon sighting is in there, one from the Aventine, and even a report from Cardassian space.”

  “Cardassian space?”

  Carolan shrugged. “Apparently so. Something disturbing a communications relay in an otherwise uninhabited system. The Klingon one’s weird though.”

  “Weird how?”

  “They’re passing it off as some kind of . . . folklore in action. Calling it a sighting of D’Vey Fek’lehr.”

  “A . . . devil ship? You mean like a UFO sighting on Earth, or the Loch Ness monster?” Geordi didn’t think the Klingons were big on seeing things.

  “Close enough,” she said with a shrug.

  “Well, I guess we asked for these. Call a senior staff meeting in five minutes. We’ll see what everybody thinks.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Scotty, Leah, Vol, Nog, Barclay, and Qat’qa joined them around the obsidian-topped table in the conference room, and Carolan repeated her information about the list of trans-slipstream wake sightings from Starfleet.

  Taking the floor, La Forge said, “I guess the next question is whether all these sightings give us enough of a pattern. Something that might lead us to where we can monitor these wakes for ourselves.”

  “That’s easily done,” Barclay said, as he brought up a holographic star chart above the table. “If I download the locations and vectors of all these sightings to astrometrics . . .” a series of flashing points appeared, joined by faintly glowing lines that crisscrossed in several areas, most of which were systems with high-mass, high-gravity objects. “There.”

  “It looks like a power flow chart,” Leah commented.

  “Adjusted for the times of the sightings, it’s clear that some of them”—Reg touched a control, and a few of the lines turned red—“are some kind of . . . spoor, all of the same thing, proceeding from one location to another in a downright impossible timeframe.”

  “Impossible by any current technological standard, you mean,” Leah pointed out.

  “That’s impossible enough for me,” La Forge said.

  “And so is this.” Leah stuck her hand into the hologram, drawing a curved line with her fingertip.

  “A projection of where they came from?” Vol asked. Leah nodded an affirmative.

  “Outside the galaxy,” Qat’qa whispered, as the trail went past the limit of the display.

  “What?” Scotty was astonished.

  “They must have come from outside the galaxy if those vectors are correct, unless they just appeared out of a different time,” Qat’qa stated.

  Barclay deleted the image of one trail going outside the galaxy. “That wouldn’t surprise me. Maybe they’re using those high-gravity objects for a temporal slingshot.”

  La Forge couldn’t take his eyes off the display. “It’s always possible, but it strikes me that it would be a coincidence that stretches credulity too far for whoever this is to always arrive in our time and in a place that looks exactly like they flew in through the galactic barrier.” He touched a marker for a dense neutron star at the conflux of several lines, and it flashed obligingly. “These points where the lines cross . . . I’m willing to bet that we’d find subspace granulation there.”

  Leah met his gaze. “I’d be surprised if we didn’t,” she agreed.

  “And if you’re traveling into a galaxy, the higher the mass and gravity of a point, the better a marker it would make from outside the barrier,” Vol said.

  Qat’qa threw up her hands. “They cannot have just—”

  “We couldn’t, but we don’t have this . . . trans-slipstream,” Barclay said.

  “The galactic barrier,” Scotty mused. “I wouldna say it was impossible to cross, seeing as I’ve done it a few times, but it’s bloody hard, and even more bloody unwise.”

  “How did you cross it, back in the twenty-third century?” Leah asked.

  “Unintentionally. Oh, we tried it on purpose the once, but even with the warp engines perfectly balanced at their maximum output, and the shields specially uprated, it wasna’ quite possible to do it under our own steam.”

  “It took something more? Alien interference?” Leah asked.

  “Exactly. One time, these scunners from the Andromeda galaxy—they called themselves Kelvans—hijacked the Enterprise, and modified my puir wee bairns to force them through the barrier, by usin’ a machine they’d brought along themselves.”

  “And how did it work?”

  “How does it work, Scotty?” James T. Kirk asked.

  Scotty looked helplessly at the chrome and shining mechanism that had been implanted into the control room that overlooked the main engineering floor on the U.S.S. Enterprise. He fought back the nausea and headache that were assailing him from the previous night, when he’d had to consume far too much alcohol in the name of duty.

  Four Kelvans, aliens from the Andromeda galaxy, had taken on human form and hijacked the Enterprise. They had modified the engines with a device of their own, which had also been capable of reducing most of the crew to desiccated polyhedrons, and crashed through the vast energy barrier at the edge of the galaxy, in an attempt to return home. Scotty had drunk one of them under the table in order to steal his control for the device, and now he was paying the price.

  Thankfully the Kelvans had discovered that they had adapted to being human too well to be able to return home, and turned the Enterprise around.

  “It works . . . too bloody well, is how it works, Captain.”

  Kirk grimaced, and Scotty knew that he had been expecting an answer along those lines. Mister Spock, however, wasn’t going to let it lie. “Mister Scott,” he said heavily, “if the Kelvan device can be reverse-engineered, it would be a great technological boon.”

  “Plus,” Kirk said, “it would mean we would have a lot more control over our trip home.”

  Scotty understood his feelings well enough. He wasn’t exactly looking forward to passing through the barrier again. Although he was glad that, this time, the Kelvans’ desiccation of the crew had meant there were no opportunities for anyone to develop rogue psi abilities like poor Gary Mitchell and Elizabeth Dehner had done when the ship first tried to penetrate the immense and incomprehensible waves of energy that enfolded the galactic rim.

  Truth to tell, sit
ting in the conference room of the Challenger over a hundred years later, Scotty liked the idea of tangling with the galactic barrier again even less than he had back on the Enterprise. Even with all the advances in technology, it was still a potent force.

  Aloud he said, “I daresay we’ll find a way.”

  “Right,” La Forge said decisively. “What’s the nearest of these high-gravity points to our current position, excluding the Bolus Reach?”

  Leah touched a glowing orb in the hologram. “Pulsar Alpha Six-Four. It’s quite near the edge of the Neutral Zone,” she warned.

  La Forge nodded somberly. “Qat’qa, set a course for there. Let’s see if the area has the same subspace granulation as the Bolus Reach and G-231.”

  “Consider us on our way, sir.”

  28

  On Romulus, politics didn’t stop simply because the Praetor, Gell Kamemor, was making a state visit to her homeworld of Glintara. She wasn’t going alone either; along with her ship, the fleet was represented by one of her newest warbirds, Remus was represented by a ship, and the Tal Shiar were represented by the Valdore-class Stormcrow, as if they needed to remind anyone of their eternal and watchful presence.

  The Praetor knew that no chairman of the Tal Shiar liked to be seen in public, but it was unavoidable that some state occasions meant such important people had to be included in the diplomatic functions.

  It had been over a year since the chairman of the Tal Shiar had left Romulus, and she found that she relished the chance to do so. Her office had almost become a prison. True, it was spacious and luxurious, and she had more power than any ship’s master, but it was an unchanging place, with no opportunity to see the new.

  “Madam Chairman?” A deep voice drew his attention. It was the captain of this ship, an iron-haired commander named Marist. The chairman had made sure to read the political files of all the ship’s officers before coming on board—knowledge was, after all, power—and judged the man to be a loyal subject. Not that this meant he was automatically trustworthy. Trust had to be earned personally, as far as the chairman was concerned.

  “Commander Marist,” she said. “You have a fine ship.”

  “Thank you, Madam Chairman.” He swelled with genuine pride.

  “Walk with me, Commander.” He fell into step beside his ultimate superior.

  “These diplomatic functions are a nuisance,” the chairman said, “but sometimes can be an opportunity as well. I’ve admired your work for some years.”

  Marist was delighted and surprised. “Thank you, Madam Chairman.”

  They arrived on the Stormcrow’s bridge, where Marist, dismissed by a smiling chairman, went to confer with a woman who was a little taller than average, and slim with whip-like muscles. “Thank you, Subcommander Voktra,” he said in response to her report. He turned back to the chairman. “We’ve reported ready to the Praetor, Madam Chairman. As soon as she gives the signal, the squadron will go to warp. It’s three days to Glintara at normal cruising speed.”

  “I know, I’ve been there before.” Everyone took their seats, and, after a few minutes Praetor Kamemor appeared on the main viewer, and gave the command to go to warp. The four ships, and their escorts, responded immediately.

  Three days later, three of the ships on the state visit dropped out of warp in Glintara’s solar system. The Stormcrow, however, did not. In fact she had gained speed, and continued to do so. Marist was baffled, and harried his chief engineer, Voktra, to find out what was wrong.

  Marist didn’t say anything, but all aboard knew why he was so frantic. The chairman of the Tal Shiar was aboard, and the Tal Shiar was never forgiving of failure. After several shifts, Voktra brought Marist the news he didn’t want to hear. “Sabotage, Commander,” she snarled. “A worm was inserted into the warp core’s software, and triggered when we tried to drop out of warp. It’s scrambled the navigational controls, helm, and it’s overloaded the warp core.”

  “Pull the plug,” Marist ordered.

  “It’s booby-trapped. If I do that, the forced quantum singularity will be loosed. Whoever did this was a technical genius.”

  “Contact the praetor and the rest of the fleet, and inform them of our situation.” Marist ordered. The centurion at the communications console was already doing so, but stopped, startled, when a face that only two people aboard would recognize appeared on the main viewer.

  “Director Vellil,” the chairman hissed, a cold anger rising in her.

  The head of the Tal Shiar’s Technical Directorate smiled. “Madam Chairman. I’d be a liar if I said I was sorry to hear of your current technical difficulties.”

  “What is the meaning of this?” Marist demanded.

  “It’s a message to the chairman, from the late Chairman Rehaek. He says, ‘See you soon.’ ” With that, Vellil was gone, but the ship was still hurtling out of control.

  “Commander,” the helmsman shouted, “I’ve corrected for the corruption in the navigational computer, and we’re well into the Neutral Zone.”

  “Turn us around,” Marist snapped.

  “Helm not responding. And, sir, we’re locked on course for a collision with a pulsar, Alpha Six-Four.”

  “That’s in Federation space,” the chairman said.

  “There’s something approaching us,” Voktra saw on a sensor monitor. “Approaching at incredible speed, like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Federation?”

  “The signal is strengthening,” Voktra saw and reported. “If these readings are accurate . . . They suggest a type of slipstream—” Her words were silenced by an enormous judder, which snapped the bridge around in a dizzying spin, hurling Voktra, Commander Marist, the chairman and everyone else pinwheeling across consoles and slamming painfully into walls and pillars. Everything went momentarily black.

  On the main screen, a green slash of wing tumbled end over end away from the ship. Alarms blared, and the lighting on the command deck turned dark red. “What happened?” the chairman demanded.

  “We’re venting plasma!” a voice called. “Decks four through nine have lost pressure. All power lost!” But those weren’t the worst things. Voktra hauled herself to her feet and staggered across to the master systems display. She almost tripped over Commander Marist, and saw that he was dead. His head was missing.

  “Report,” the chairman snapped again. “What hit us? What weapon?”

  “No weapon, Chairman . . . A collision.”

  “Collision? With what? A Federation ship?”

  “Impossible to tell, as sensors are down. Chairman . . . we’ve lost the port wing. Sheared clean off.”

  “Go on, Voktra.”

  “Main power is offline, shields and weapons offline, cloak offline—”

  “That’s too many damned offlines. What do we still have online?”

  “Life support, replicators, and main power. Oh, no.” Voktra couldn’t quite bring herself to believe what she saw there, but she could feel a pit open up in her stomach anyway with the approaching horror of it.

  The chairman saw her expression. “What is it?”

  “Main power is online but there’s a feedback loop. The singularity is irreparably destabilized. Its spin is wobbling, and out of control.”

  “How serious?”

  “The singularity will break free from any possible confinement in less than an hour.”

  “Eject the core!”

  “Ejection systems offline.”

  “And then we explode in an hour . . .”

  “We implode in an hour.” The chairman scowled at her. Voktra hated to make the suggestion, but as senior officer now that Marist was dead, it was her responsibility to do so. “Chairman . . . We ought to abandon ship.”

  “Send a distress signal,” the chairman said at last.

  29

  Challenger hurtled toward Pulsar Alpha Six-Four at warp five, when Nog broke the news. “Captain, I’m picking up a distress signal, on all frequencies. Audio only, but it’s a strong signal, which
means they’re close.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “. . . the warbird Stormcrow. We have suffered a collision with an unknown vessel, and are losing atmosphere. All power lost, and our warp core is unstable. Implosion is estimated in . . .”

  “Warbird? In the Neutral Zone?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, we can take that up with them afterwards. For now, set a course for the Stormcrow’s position, maximum warp.”

  “Course laid in, maximum warp,” Qat’qa echoed, her voice reeking with disappointment and revulsion.

  La Forge knew exactly why she would be dismayed at the idea of going to rescue Romulans. He wasn’t sure if he’d earned the right to use the diminutive of her name yet, but judged that it was an appropriate moment to try. “Kat . . . I served with Worf for a lot of years, and I know how you feel about Romulans, but . . . a distress signal is a distress signal. Even in the Neutral Zone.”

  “If it really is a distress signal, and if they see things that way, sir.”

  “Don’t worry, that thought occurred to me too. Nog, let’s keep the shields up, and weapons ready, just in case.” He thought for a moment. “Qat’qa, join me in my ready room.” She handed over her console and followed the captain in.

  “Sir, if you are thinking of giving me a lecture on interspecies relations, and my duty on this ship . . . I will not let my hatred interfere with my duty. That is not my way.”

  La Forge was glad to hear it. “That’s not why I wanted to talk to you. I wanted you to understand that . . . I don’t trust Romulans either.”

  “Sir?”

  “I’ve been a prisoner of the Romulans.”

  Qat’qa looked shocked, and he was pretty sure it was on his behalf, as a kind of sympathetic shock. “They tortured you in . . .”

  “No, actually they didn’t. At least, I don’t think they did.”

  “You don’t think? I would have thought that being under the thumb of the Romulans would be a very memorable experience.”

  “No . . . actually it was an intentional part of what they did.” He paused, recalling her personnel file. “You lost family in the Klingon civil war, didn’t you? When the Duras family, backed by the Romulans, tried to take over the Empire.”