by Peter David
The captain nodded. “I’m certain you will.” She drew the chief engineer aside with a pointed glance toward the archway that led back to the turbolifts. Both women dropped their voices a notch, though Shelby thought the Delbian could still hear them, judging from the way the tall alien twitched.
“Don’t think I don’t know that my commendation upset you,” Blackswan said softly. Not in apology, though. The captain rarely, if ever, had to apologize.
“The commendation was a glowing review of my service aboard this vessel,” Shelby said. If incomplete, she did not say.
Blackswan nodded as if she had heard the unspoken comment as well. “Sometimes those are the hardest to take. Just don’t let your personal feelings interfere with your analysis of the data.”
“My personal feelings never interfere with my analysis.”
“Spoken like a true engineer.”
And not like a commander? Shelby choked back a sigh of frustration. “Captain,” she said, in acknowledgment if not in agreement. “It would help if we had access to Starfleet’s original data.”
“You have everything Starfleet sent. Use the data as given, Lieutenant.”
“The data is nearly useless. I can’t do my job with what I’ve been given, sir.” She shook her head. “I need context. Reading between the lines is the one thing we excel at over the computers.”
Blackswan almost looked like she would relent. Then, “So read between them, Elizabeth. Starfleet has its reasons for scrubbing the data clean, but what you infer from that data is completely up to you.”
Shelby nodded brusquely. “Yes, Captain.”
Blackswan took her leave with a nod and a sharp turn on one heel. Shelby waited for her captain’s footsteps to recede, sure that her own voice would not travel so far, and then turned back to her team.
“Get back in there and run all the comparatives again. Try some free thinking and see if you can match up anything. I don’t believe Starfleet is wasting our time here, looking for proof positive that the two are not related. They are. We need to see how and why.”
“Unless it is a test,” Davidson said. “No right answer.”
Rocha nodded. “Kobayashi Maru.”
“I’m not buying,” Shelby snapped. “Anyway, you’ve got nothing to sell. Get to work. I’ll be on the auxiliary terminal in the next space.”
“Just so we don’t duplicate our efforts,” the Delbian said, “what will you be looking for, Lieutenant?”
Shelby shrugged. “Answers.”
Captains might have to take data as given, but Shelby’s duties right now were as an engineer. And one of the first maxims of being an engineer was to question everything.
Even Starfleet.
Easier said than done.
“Damn overachieving technicians,” Shelby muttered aloud after another hour of searching and sifting through data. Whoever at Starfleet had been in charge of sterilizing the data, they’d done a damn fine job. Not one marker was left to indicate the ship or station involved. No stellar phenomena that could be easily catalogued and matched in stellar cartography. And all time stamps had been cut down to give only hour and minute, no dates. The intelligence could be from last month, last year, or in the last decade.
The empty mugs from two scalding raktajino s (sans mint this time) stood at ease on the edge of the workstation. Absently, Shelby carried them back to the nearest replicator, letting her brain relax over the mundane cleaning duties. Her team was still at work in the other room, although Rocha was into her off time now and had an early watch tomorrow. The sciences ensign couldn’t be kept on task much longer.
Neither, likely, could Shelby.
Too much data, she decided, depositing the mugs into the replicator and sequencing them back into pure energy. She needed help.
“All right,” she said, stopping her team in the middle of what might have been their third analysis, maybe their fifth. “We’re setting aside the D5 surveys for now and we’re digging into the Starfleet files.”
“What do you think we’ll find there?” Davidson asked, flicking his teeth.
“That’s what I want you to tell me. Chief, recheck all the time stamps. Order the data as best you can, and while you are at it cross-check with known operations recorded in the computer. Rocha, pull out anything not starship-related. Davidson, you do the same for starship data. You two have early duty tomorrow, so another hour and then break for the night.”
“What about me?” the Delbian asked.
“Twellum, you are on anomalies. Some of those power signatures I saw in there looked way out of proportion to Federation systems. Isolate and identify, if you can. I’ll be doing some similar work, so we’ll cross-check with each other as needed.”
Shelby was used to being the brightest star, ready with the answer. Always had been, since her early days in the Academy and as she raced through her first assignments with a meteoric flash. This time, though, it was Rocha who made the first discovery. Working with Pako, Rocha pulled an entire set of sensor readings out of the data stream that had nothing to do with starship functions and everything in common with some of the readings they had taken today on D5.
“There is no indication of what they were measuring,” she said, showing the team. “But there is similar HSF interference, and they used shielded gamma pulses to take surface readings, not unlike what we did from orbit before beaming down.”
“Coincidence?” Shelby asked, rubbing at an ache in the back of her neck.
“Maybe. High-spectrum flux is not uncommon in areas where large energy signatures have overlapped. Shielded gamma pulses are a standard high-orbit sweep when the atmosphere shows even mild ionization. Still…”
“Still,” Shelby agreed. Both went back to work.
So if Starfleet had an idea who or what did this to the D5 outpost, of course they would sanitize the data. Especially if it was the Romulans. Colonies along the Neutral Zone would panic. Militias might decide to make a few preemptive strikes against Romulan targets. Containment would be important.
But how to tell where this happened? To whom? Federation starships were most often identified by the tags inserted into sensor data. Also by personal log entries and patrol zones. By transmission codes, warp energy signatures, and at times by weapons configuration if the vessel was outfitted with anything not-quite-standard.
Configuration.
Configuration.
Something about that rattled around inside Shelby’s head. Something useful. She relaxed and let her mind spin off into free thinking, a feat not too difficult considering the late hour. Then she had it! Diagnostic configurations!
Starfleet vessels calibrated sensors and weapons according to a set of prepared standards, but there was a variance, and those variances could be as unique as any warp-engine signature. Shelby pulled the shield data, sensor guides, and phaser emissions from the files, filtering them through the computer to glean the specs by which they had been calibrated. She didn’t get them all, but she got enough to make a comparison. Of course, that would only help if the vessel was one the Yosemite had come into contact with and had similar information on. A long shot, but she programmed it into the computer anyway.
And got a match in less than ten seconds.
Shelby was more inclined to doubt the results, pulled up so fast when there must have been thousands of points to match and compare for probability. Then she saw the registry.
NCC-1701-D. U.S.S. Enterprise. In System J-25 on Stardate 42761.3.
The variances matched those from the initial survey data of D5.
That’s when the rest of the data fell into place, and Shelby felt her strength hit an all-time low as a prickly sensation slowly crawled over the back of her neck. Reports of the Enterprise’s last big encounter were still circulating through official and unofficial channels. A new threat to the Federation. Or, maybe, only newly known.
“Chief,” she said, voice cracking just a bit as her throat tightened up. “Chief, run what yo
u have organized against any reports from the Enterprise. Put whatever timeline you have established against verbal reports of their encounter two…three months ago.” Be wrong. Be wrong.
“Dead-on match, sweet…uh, Lieutenant.”
Shelby nodded slowly as the rest of the team straightened to stiff attention, realizing just what data they had been working with this day. It wasn’t much of a game anymore, and it certainly wasn’t a test.
It was the Borg.
Which made their comparative analysis all but impossible, though impossible was gaining ground fast.
Shelby hadn’t expected sleep to come easily the night before, and she’d been right. As she lay awake on her bed, the roll of Rigelian memory cotton cradling her head, all she could think about was how to give Starfleet what it wanted. How to prove that D5’s outpost had been attacked by the Borg. If the Borg had come through this quadrant last year, and if they were coming back now that the Enterprise had stirred them, they could be closer than anyone thought.
Not a pleasant thought to sleep on.
Of course, in the morning the problem remained, and Shelby still didn’t see a way to solve it. They knew next to nothing about the Borg, especially when compared with their age-old enemies the Romulans, or even with the Ferengi or Cardassians.
The Borg represented a threat on a scale the Federation had never faced, and Shelby knew she had more to contribute than a simple data analysis. Yet it looked more and more certain that at best (if the rumors held true) she’d end up tucked away in some lab at Starfleet, and at worst she’d be heading for the chief-engineer position on a larger starship already with a full complement of command-level officers. Trapped by her natural gifts. Overlooked as the pressure forced Starfleet to sacrifice career paths for the expedient gathering of intelligence.
Outstanding service and dedication. That’s what they expected of her.
It was all that she knew how to give.
Her family’s admirality greeted her in the morning, as always. Mother and father, resplendent in the red uniforms of command, ready to meet the universe head-on so long as they had each other. Their support meant everything to Shelby, and she would never think to indulge her own career over the needs of Starfleet.
She showered and prepared herself for a new day, then selected a fresh gold uniform from her closet. Her rank insignia attached to the collar, she brushed her fingers over the two golden pips. Then she put all thoughts of promotion, of command, of someday having a red uniform in her closet instead of gold, out of her mind. Today she had a tough challenge ahead of her, and personal needs would not figure into her plans.
Plans that involved her entire team. She stopped in to see Captain Blackswan first thing, to personally update her CO on everything she had discovered the evening before. Then, securing permission from the captain, Shelby pulled Rocha and Davidson off duty and ordered replacements to fill in for them. Twellum and Jodd Pako were already back to work on their own, and quickly grabbed fresh beverages as the team gathered around the common workstation.
“This is too much,” she admitted, first thing. “We don’t know enough about the Borg, and what we do know quite frankly scares the hell out of me. But, what we have is all we get to work with. Now, how do we handle it? How do we prove, or conclusively deny, that the Borg are responsible for our lost outpost at D5?”
“Mostly,” Rocha began, “we have two different encounters. The Enterprise did analyze a second planetside site, presumably where the Borg had attacked everything and everyone there, but it isn’t helpful in our case.”
Twellum nodded, turning it into a half-bow. “We’re trying to compare starship combat data to a planetside survey. They do not have enough commonalities for a frame of reference.” His voice was high and reedy this morning. From stress? Lack of sleep? Shelby wasn’t sure. Aliens were just so…alien. And the Borg more so.
“Then we have to find a frame of reference,” Shelby ordered them. She paused, looked them over one by one. “Davidson, you are the Borg.”
“What did I ever do to you?”
“Cut it. You’re the Borg and you’re going to scoop up the outpost. How?”
Davidson flicked his teeth, thought about the data provided in the military reports from the Enterprise. It was sketchy, Shelby knew. “Tractor beam?” he finally asked. “They operate on a scale we don’t normally approach. Big freaking vessels. And they used one—a tractor beam, I mean—on the Enterprise when they cut into her hull.”
It was the most obvious answer. They checked sensor data on the Borg tractors against residuals first encountered on D5. There wasn’t enough data.
Frustrated, Shelby snapped, “Rocha?”
“Well, it’s not likely, but has anyone considered physical means?”
“Impractical,” Twellum said. “Borg are too advanced.” He held up one long, skinny arm. “And I’ve already considered transporters,” he said to the chief engineer. “The Crystalline Entity used a kind of large-scale matter-to-energy conversion to strip-mine entire planets. It is possible the Borg beamed up the outpost, and materialized it later in whole or part.”
“Or simply assimilated it as raw data,” Shelby considered. “Worth a look.”
It was also worth a bit more to the harried engineer, who felt a spark of something warm deep inside. This is what it is like to command, she knew suddenly. Bring others in at the peak of their talent, direct them, and engineer a solution to a problem. Maybe she did not necessarily need to wear the red to take advantage of those abilities.
It gave her a surge of hope as the team tore into the computer files, trying to prove their theory, which had taken a huge leap away from merely trying to match up data to serious tactical considerations with regard to the Borg. Shelby barely noticed when one of her team members pressed a steaming raktajino into her hands, flavored heavily with chocolate and peppermint.
“Not enough information,” she finally decided. “Dammit. Nice theory, though. We save that one for the formal report. Starfleet will want to look into it more.”
“Look into what more?” Captain Blackswan asked, making another of her casual visits to engineering. If she felt the intensity of the room, the charge that had taken hold of the team since this morning, she did not comment on it. Shelby brought the captain up to date, including the theories being pounded back and forth. “Don’t let me interrupt,” she said. She carried her own beverage, an Orion tea that Shelby had tried once and (privately) compared to grass clippings. Blackswan took up station near the door, supervising.
“Okay,” Shelby said, turning to Jodd Pako. The Iotian had watched the last bit of byplay with some interest, but then had stuck his face back into the display on which he had looped through over and over again a small segment of the Enterprise’s run-in with the Borg. “Chief, you are the Borg now.”
“I’ve been assimilated?” His nasal twang made the word sound like a slang term for murder. In a way it was.
“Yeah, Chief. You are Borg.”
“We are the Borg,” the Iotian said deadpan, with an eerie lifelessness. “You will join us and learn to service the Borg.”
No one spoke for a few painful heartbeats, no doubt thinking, as Shelby was, of the voice recordings taken from the Enterprise’s encounter.
“O-kay.” Davidson sidestepped away from the Iotian. “That’s as close as I ever want to be to one of those.”
Shelby spent a stern glance on the younger ensign. “Davidson, you are the outpost spokesman. Twellum, handle your stuff. Rocha, life sciences. I’m tactical.”
The four engineers each readied what might be a line of defense against Pako, whose fingers flew over the workstation controls to bat aside defenses in the same way the Borg ship had brushed aside nearly all efforts by the Enterprise. It took considerable restraint for Shelby not to counter some of his more basic moves, or to declare limited victories when an assault she formulated might—might!—have injured a Borg vessel. She let Pako have his head, deciding for hims
elf what worked and what didn’t. With nearly unlimited power reserves, there wasn’t much they could do that a Borg vessel couldn’t counter in the end.
But it was when she noticed Pako repeating the same tactics the third time through that she halted the free-form simulation.
“Why?” she asked. “Why not come at us with a different combination of resources?”
The chief shrugged, an exaggerated gesture that used most of his upper body. “Because they didn’t do that against the Enterprise. We…Borg…cannot be denied in the end.”
“Interesting idea,” Rocha said. “Can a collective consciousness truly innovate?”
“No,” Shelby decided. “They grow by assimilating other cultures, new technology. Innovation would be frowned upon as individualistic.”
“So they adapt, but do not innovate,” Blackswan said, interested now. “Can you use that?”
Shelby smiled. Her team had come through, and she held the last piece in hand. “We can,” she said. “It gives us everything we need to prove what happened on D5.” She looked at her team, who were all now outside the box, but maybe just not quite as far as her. “The Borg must have diagnostic configurations too,” she explained. “Want to bet they don’t have near as many variances?”
The Yosemite’s bridge seemed more crowded than usual to Shelby. One additional person was all it took, though, if it was the right person. Especially if it was a Starfleet admiral.
J.P. Hanson was a short bulldog of a man who carried his years in Starfleet around with him like duranium armor. He had a careworn face and dark diamond cutters for eyes. He also had a way of putting the ship’s captain at her ease, while everyone around Patricia Blackswan jumped to their duties to help keep up the ship’s reputation. The admiral and captain spoke like old friends, hardly paying attention to any of the crew around them. He referred to Captain Blackswan only as “Patricia.” Coming from him, it seemed high praise rather than inappropriate familiarity.
