Collective Hindsight Book 2

by Aaron Rosenberg

  “That’s because it’s oil that’s been fused into glass.” She showed him her own tricorder reading. “Very clever—it’s comparable to our transparent aluminum, taking the best qualities of two different materials and combining them into a new structure.”

  “Of course. The energy is then drawn from these panels as necessary, either for fuel or to power other systems.” He traced a conduit with one hand, following it back to the thick column at the center of the room, and tapped one of the crystals embedded within it. “This is the ship’s actual engine. Power is pumped into these crystals, which magnify it and emit it through the thrusters placed along the hull. The tubes just beyond this store hydrogen and helium, which is ignited by the heat from the crystals. The sudden ejection of supercharged gases provides velocity, and smaller thrusts allow for course corrections.”

  “Right.” Gomez tapped a few equations into her tricorder. “But there’s a problem. If I’m right”—she showed him her calculations and he was forced to admit that she was—“these crystals should only enable the ship to accelerate to warp one. Maybe warp two, if the ship was running at maximum power and drained itself completely. But according to the logs from R5-3791, the Dancing Star was doing warp three when it entered Randall V’s system.”

  “Impossible, given this data.” Tev tapped one of the crystals again. “Nor has the engine been altered since its original discovery.”

  His superior met his gaze, and they both nodded. Something didn’t add up.

  “Let’s get back to the da Vinci,” she told him, “and tell the others. Maybe together we can figure out why this ship was going faster than its engines could possibly manage.”

  As they waited to beam back, Tev was surprised to realize that he did not begrudge sharing the puzzle with his teammates. Oh, he knew he could solve it on his own, given enough time, but he found himself curious to see what conclusions the others would suggest.

  * * *

  Gold shook his head as Gomez sat back down. The entire S.C.E. team—Gomez, Tev, Blue, Stevens, and Soloman, as well as security chief Domenica Corsi, linguist Bart Faulwell, and cultural specialist Carol Abramowitz—was gathered in the observation lounge.

  “So you’re telling me that this thing couldn’t have been traveling at those speeds?”

  “No, it clearly was—the outpost’s data is very detailed, and their information on later events matches perfectly with our own logs, so we know their equipment was working properly. But those engines cannot produce that much acceleration.” Sonya glanced at the rest of her team. “So, any ideas on how it managed that trick?”

  “Could it have had a second engine?” Faulwell asked, but Stevens and Blue both shook their heads.

  “We went over that thing top to bottom,” Stevens told his roommate. “Nothing else even remotely like an engine. And nothing in the thrusters themselves that could have amplified the output to that degree.”

  “What about outside help?” Abramowitz said. “I know some races use delivery or launch systems for their ships—they have a much larger external engine that drops away after launch, or they have two ships linked together to increase initial velocity.”

  “A workable system,” Tev said, and Gold kept the shock off his face. Had his second officer just indirectly complimented someone?

  “The Dancing Star could have used such a system on its initial launch,” Gomez added. “And it’s currently moving at warp one-point-five, which suggests that whatever it used before wasn’t available for extra speed this time around. We didn’t find anything on the hull to suggest that extra engines were there, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t either.” She glanced around again. “Good suggestion, Carol. Any other ideas?”

  Gold nodded to himself. That was one of the things he liked most about his first officer. She was good with her team, she acknowledged contributions by her staff, and she kept her options open. This time it was Corsi who spoke up.

  “Since we’re talking about its initial launch system, do we know where this thing came from?”

  Tev frowned. “I have computed its path, based upon its position within the Randall V system, its angle of trajectory, its speed, and an estimation of its travel time based upon the fatigue of its hull.” He tapped a command into his padd, and the conference room screen displayed a star map. Randall V was circled, and a gold line ran from that off to one edge of the chart.

  “That’s the Delta Quadrant,” Blue said, leaning forward to get a better look.

  “Correct.” If anything, Tev’s frown deepened, which surprised Gold. Usually the Tellarite was smug about his discoveries. Why did he look almost displeased now? But that was quickly answered. “I have cross-referenced the location with the logs Starfleet has received from the U.S.S. Voyager, however, and have discovered a problem.” Another command, and that portion of the map expanded. The line was now much thicker, and could be easily followed—as it ran right to a circle of absolute black.

  “A black hole?” Stevens glanced at the chart, then back at Tev. “You’re telling me this ship came from a black hole?”

  “No, of course not.” Now Gold knew why Tev was so unhappy—he’d been wrong. “Clearly it could not have originated there. But that is what the data suggests.”

  “What if it came from even farther away?” Faulwell asked.

  “Then it would have been traveling for a longer period of time,” Tev replied, “and it was not.”

  “Not if it was going even faster originally.” They all turned to look at the slight, bearded linguist, who shrugged. “Since it was already going faster than it should have when it reached the system, what’s to say it wasn’t going even faster before that?”

  “Makes sense,” Gomez said. “Tev, extend the line farther out and let’s see what we get.” A moment later, the gold line projected past the black hole and off the far edge of the chart.

  “Say, what’s that over there, anyway?” Stevens pointed to a spot past the black hole, and Tev obligingly expanded that section—Gold was pleased to see that he didn’t object or insult Stevens in the process. Maybe the man was learning, after all. With that portion enlarged, they could see a gold circle not far from the path, with a designation beside it. “That’s a supernova.”

  “It’s not on the path, though,” Blue pointed out.

  “Not right now,” Fabian replied. “But if this ship really did pass that black hole, it would have been thrown off course by the gravity well.” He worked with his padd for a moment, then beamed the information to Tev. “Does that look right to you?”

  Tev glanced at it, then nodded. “Yes,” was all he said, but even that was a step in the right direction, and Gold exchanged a smile with Gomez. Tev input the new information and the gold line shifted—it still ran straight from the black hole to Randall V, but now it angled as it passed the black hole. And ran right across the supernova.

  “So you’re saying this thing came from a supernova?” Gold asked.

  “I don’t think that was its point of origin, no,” Stevens admitted. “But it did pass by this one. In fact”—he tapped a finger on the table absently—“what if it used the supernova for the energy boost Carol suggested?”

  “You mean a slingshot?” Blue asked, and Stevens nodded. Tev had already begun typing commands into his padd, but Gold was lost.

  “Hold on a second,” he said. “Indulge an old man—slingshot?”

  “It’s a way to use the gravity of a sun or planet for momentum,” Gomez explained. “The ship circles the object, entering its gravity well and gaining speed from the added force, then whips around it fast enough to break free of orbit. Cut it too close and you’re trapped in orbit for good, too wide and you don’t actually gain much, but do it right and you boost your velocity significantly, and with no real fuel cost.”

  Tev looked up and nodded. “I have calculated the effects of the Dancing Star slingshotting around the supernova, and believe that Mr. Stevens is correct.” Gold was fairly sure that was the
first time Tev hadn’t referred to Fabian as “Specialist” or “Technician.” “I have put the new information on the screen.” The image had changed—now it showed the line starting a little past the supernova. “The ship’s initial speed would have been warp one-point-three, well inside its capabilities. After circling the supernova, it would have reached a speed of warp nine-point-eight. It would have reduced that to three-point-one by the time it reached Randall V.”

  “Good work, everyone,” Gomez stated, and Gold admired the way she had carefully included all of them in the praise—a subtle reminder that they could do more together than alone. “Now we know where it came from, and we’ve solved the riddle of its excessive speed. Let’s keep doing what we’re doing, reevaluating and reexamining, and see what else we can figure out.”

  She stood to go, and Gold watched them all file out of the room, sparing one last glance at the screen before he exited as well. A part of him was horrified by the notion that this runaway ship could move so fast, but the explorer side of him just thought, Oh, to fly so far, so fast.

  Chapter

  3

  “Look at this input capacitor,” Sonya muttered. She and Tev were back in the Dancing Star’s engine room, examining more of its equipment, and the more she saw the more impressed she became. “It’s got a cascading valve structure—brilliant design. How much would you say this could take before overloading, Tev? Twelve gigawatts?”

  He stepped over to examine it, then nodded. “Twelve-point-one, possibly twelve-point-two. Impressive design.”

  She gestured around them. “And this is just one of fifty like it. That’s over six hundred gigawatts this ship can absorb at once. Amazing. Most cities can’t accommodate that much energy!” She ran one finger lightly over the capacitor. “This ship could have slingshotted through the supernova instead of around it.”

  Tev glanced at his tricorder. “Yes, it could have. Within the corona, certainly—it would have been able to absorb more energy that way, and still been far enough from the core to escape.”

  She nodded, thinking that one over. A ship that literally dove into a supernova for energy and acceleration! Amazing! The more she saw of this ship, the more it impressed her.

  Another thought occurred to her, then. Salek’s report hadn’t mentioned the capacitors at all, or estimated the ship’s absorption rate. He had noted that it used stellar energy for fuel, of course, but had suggested a more passive approach. Still, Salek’s main concern hadn’t been the ship’s operating specs, just what it was doing there and how to get rid of it quickly.

  As they continued their investigation, Sonya let herself wonder about the Vulcan she had replaced. She had never met Salek, of course, but she had read his files and his record, and had heard stories about him from Fabian, Carol, Pattie, and of course Tev’s predecessor, Kieran Duffy. Salek had been a good commander, and his handling of the situation at Randall V had been exemplary, sacrificing himself to save everyone else.

  Instinctively, she thought, Just like Kieran did at Galvan. She banished that thought quickly.

  But Sonya found herself wondering about how Salek’s mind had worked, particularly as an engineer.

  She thought back over the re-creation she’d watched about the original encounter with the Dancing Star. Salek and Fabian had examined the engine room, just as she and Tev were doing now. He’d announced that Carol had been right about the ship running on solar energy, and had then told Kieran that he thought the crew had been killed by an internal energy release. But how had he known that so quickly?

  “Fabian,” she called out, tapping her combadge. His reply came immediately.

  “What’s up, Commander?”

  “You were here with Salek during that first sweep of the engine room, right?”

  “Yeah, he and I went that way and Duff and Pattie went forward, to the bridge.”

  “How did he figure out the ship’s system so quickly? In the re-creation it seemed like he knew almost immediately how it worked.”

  “Well, that’s just the way Salek was,” Fabian replied. “Actually, Carol had already suggested that it was solar-powered, so he was already thinking that way.”

  “So he’d made up his mind beforehand?”

  “No, but he had a theory already. Duff told me once that that’s how Salek worked. He’d come up with a theory to fit the situation, and then see if it held up. Every time he got new data, he’d plug it into the theory. If it broke, he’d come up with a new theory. If it almost fit, he’d figure out where to bend the theory so they matched. And if everything fit: voilà!”

  Tev nodded. “A sensible approach.”

  Sonya nodded as well. “So he always had a theory, for every situation?”

  “Not instantly, no,” Fabian replied. “He’d listen to the initial data. Then he’d come up with a theory based on that, and he’d test it as he went.”

  “Okay, thanks.” Sonya thought about that. It did make sense. It was inductive reasoning, she realized. Salek had formed theories and then tested them against the data to see if they held true. A good, solid method, and excellent for an engineer. Any time he had to create an item, he could figure out what the device had to do and then break that down into specifics. If the first method he thought of wouldn’t do the trick he’d try a different one until he found a method that would provide the necessary results.

  That just wasn’t how she thought, was all. She had a tendency to wait until she’d gathered all the data she could possibly get, and then try to piece together a theory from that. Deductive reasoning—from small to large, rather than the other way around. Her way didn’t work as well for straight engineering—she got hung up on details too easily, and if she missed even one element she couldn’t see the bigger picture, like trying to build a puzzle whose image you didn’t know beforehand, while missing some of the pieces. But it was a perfect fit for most S.C.E. missions, because they involved reverse-engineering instead. And by not jumping to conclusions, by waiting until she had all the data, Sonya could be sure that she had everything necessary to reach the right conclusion.

  Which gave her the advantage here, she realized. The problem with inductive reasoning was that, if all the data fit your established hypothesis, you assumed it was right—if you had already decided that the hole was square, and all the pieces fit through that hole, you would believe that the square was the answer. But if you looked at all the pieces first, and saw that they were all triangles, you’d know that the correct answer was the triangle. The square was the wrong answer because it didn’t match, but it seemed to work because none of the triangles were too big to fit through it. So Salek’s theory had seemed right because nothing had contradicted it, but he hadn’t had all the facts beforehand. If he had been completely right the Dancing Star would not be active again, and they wouldn’t be here. They had more facts now, more to work with, and were more likely to come up with the real answer, especially if they let the details form the answer rather than the other way around.

  Hindsight, Sonya thought ruefully. Looking back now, they could see the things that the team had missed the first time around, and where they’d gone wrong. She just hoped that catching those past errors would let them find the real solution and make the right decision this time. It was unlikely that they’d get a third try at it.

  * * *

  Numbers scrolled across the screen, and Soloman lost himself among them. As was always the case when he worked with code like this, a part of him felt free, able to soar again—no more restriction to words or emotions, just pure logic and computation. But another part of him wept, because the numbers were trapped behind the monitor’s glass while he was trapped within his own body. If he were standing at the actual computer access port on the Dancing Star, he could have switched on his belt unit and simply spoken directly to the computer, the code flowing between them with no barrier. And, when 111 had been alive, the three of them would have formed a perfect trinity, the numbers dancing back and forth in a rhythm
he still ached to recapture.

  But Commander Gomez had ordered him and Fabian and Pattie to go through their old files first, which meant he only had the data he and 111 had downloaded that first time.

  While doing so, he noticed a line of code—he and 111 had found it before, obviously, or it wouldn’t be in the recording now. But they hadn’t paid much attention to it—it had not been relevant at the time. The commands embedded in it were so simple, so direct, and so restricted in their conditional trigger that it had been easy to dismiss them as unimportant. But conditions had changed, and they were all too applicable now.

  Soloman’s face burned, and his fingers almost twitched, which could have been disastrous—a single wrong keystroke and the entire recording might have been altered, or even purged. He had to pause to collect himself, which had the unfortunate result of leaving those particular lines of code sitting on the screen, staring back at him accusingly. He’d been so worried that he would not be able to perform as well now, as Soloman, as he and 111 had done before as a pair. He’d asked Pattie what would happen if he missed something now, or couldn’t decipher something again, because of that lack. But it had never occurred to him that the opposite might be the case. That he might find something he and 111 had missed.

  It scared him, making him wonder what else they might have missed, here and on other missions. Now that he knew that they had not been infallible, he found himself questioning all of the decisions they had made together, all of the data they thought they’d decoded. But another part of him, a part he was frightened to admit existed, was thrilled by the prospect. Ever since 111’s death he had tormented himself with the conviction that they had been perfect together in every way, and thus by himself he could never hope to match that perfection. But they hadn’t been perfect. And, while it might diminish his pride in what they’d had, it offered him hope that he could perform just as well by himself as they had together. Perhaps better—he had sacrificed speed, and the ability to have his computations double-checked instantly, but perhaps he had gained a bit more insight, and a bit more care in his work.