“I wish,” said Duffy, “we knew how da Vinci did it. I suspect they used one of Fabe’s modified torpedoes to transmit Soloman-designed software to our tricorders, but we don’t know. We’ll just have to hope our method works.”
Roth emerged into the sensor room, climbing down a ladder from a Jefferies tube.
“Well,” he said, “the captain has it all set. The Chinook personnel are being kept busy at the local Starfleet adjunct’s office until we arrive and can beam them over.” He blinked. “Hey, couldn’t they be here already? This is a simulation, they could be a few hundred yards away.”
“Or tens of kilometers,” replied Gomez, “and even if they are close, we’d never be able to find them and get a transporter lock through all the force fields and holograms.”
“You know,” said Duffy, “if this works, we’ll be punching a narrow-bandwidth EM hole through Enigma to the outside, to get our signal through. You could do the same thing to create a sensor window. Aim it like a searchlight, and you could scan anywhere in Enigma.”
Gomez grunted. “I wish we had an extra day to work on that idea. I wish you’d come up with it before we started our modifications. In fact, I wish you’d come up with it before we got stuck in Enigma in the first place.”
“Sorry,” Duffy said with one of those irritatingly endearing grins of his.
“Well, it’s too late now. As Captain Scott once said to me, ‘Sometimes, lass, you’re just stuck with plan A.’”
* * *
Stevens settled the torpedo onto the launch cradle and disconnected the anti-gravs. He checked the torpedo room’s status display, satisfied himself everything was in order, and tapped his combadge.
“Stevens to bridge. I’m ready to fire down here.”
Gold replied, “We’ll need a few minutes to have Soloman pull back to a safe distance. You’re early, Stevens.”
He chuckled. “Somebody named Scott once told me to always pad my repair estimates.”
“I’ll just bet he did. Stand by.”
* * *
Though the Lincoln hadn’t yet reached Starbase 12, Duffy and Omthon headed to the transporter room. Depending on how things went, they might need to bring the Chinook people rapidly into their conspiracy.
Pattie stayed behind in the sensor room, to initiate their communications pulse just as soon as the solenoids were ready.
“There’ll be a security team at the transporter room of course,” said Duffy, looking to make sure there was nobody else within earshot, “but Lieutenant Roth is leading it, and he’s handpicked the team.”
Omthon didn’t seem to be listening. “She’s a beautiful woman.”
Duffy managed not to trip over his own feet. He kept looking straight ahead. “Who?”
“Sonya Gomez.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Duffy said glumly.
“It’s a good thing Sonya has been dealing with Captain Newport, Mr. Duffy. You are a very poor liar.”
Duffy considered for a moment. “That smell thing, it doesn’t come in a bottle, does it?”
* * *
Commander Gomez loitered off to one side of the Lincoln‘s bridge, pretending to examine the vacant engineering station. A few of the bridge crew gave her the occasional curious glance, but largely, she went unnoticed.
She glanced back at Captain Newport, who sat in the big chair like Zeus on his throne. He rubbed his chin, and stared intently at the main viewer. They’d be dropping out of warp in a few minutes.
She wondered how Pattie was doing. It was impossible to know precisely how much thermal shock the solenoid cores could take, or exactly when they would be ready. At least we’ll save the Chinook people.
But then she had an ugly thought. They were only assuming the simulation would bring back the real Chinook away team in response to Newport’s perceptions.
But what if they were somewhere else, lost in their own simulation? What if, instead of the real away team, Enigma gave them back only holographic duplicates? Then they might not be able to save anybody at all.
* * *
Stevens stepped out of the turbolift and onto the da Vinci‘s bridge.
Gold looked at him curiously.
“Nothing more I could do down there, Captain. I figured this would be the place to watch the show. In fact”—he glanced at the tactical station—“I was wondering if I could push the button?”
Gold nodded. “Be my guest.”
McAllan moved out of the way to allow Stevens access.
“Just one thing, Stevens.”
“Sir?”
“Don’t miss.”
* * *
Duffy and Omthon stopped just outside the transporter room, and Duffy groaned. “Not now!”
The ball of light hovered just outside the door, then shaped itself back into the form of the Bolian officer.
“Listen to me,” said Duffy, “your ship is in danger. You have to listen to me.”
The Bolian looked annoyed. “You disrupt the simulation. You must be isolated.”
* * *
“Captain,” said Lincoln‘s conn officer, “we’re being hailed. A ship is matching course with us.”
“On screen.”
Gomez looked up and gasped. She’d seen the ship before, but only as a drawing on a padd. It was Duffy’s S.C.E. ship.
“They’re the U.S.S. Roebling,” reported the ops officer. “Sir, they’re asking us to beam over a Commander Gomez, a Lt. Commander Duffy, and Crewperson P8 Blue.”
Gomez blinked. Roebling.
She remembered the name from her engineering history class. A nineteenth-century engineering family back on Earth. If memory served, they designed and built the Brooklyn Bridge. Duffy had mentioned visiting the Brooklyn Bridge to her once.
Enigma had to be plucking things from Duffy’s mind, only they didn’t realize this ship was real only to him.
“Captain,” said Gomez firmly, “that is not a Federation ship; it’s an alien imposter.”
“Captain,” said the ops officer, “all their Federation identity codes verify.”
“Check your database. You’ll find no U.S.S. Roebling listed, nor will you find any ship matching that configuration. Look at it! It’s a poor copy of a Norway-class vessel,” she added with a mental apology to Duffy.
Newport looked at her. He nodded. “What should we do?”
“I recommend evasive action. Fire on it if you have to, but don’t let it delay us getting to Starbase 12.”
* * *
As abruptly as he’d appeared, the false Bolian was gone. Duffy was surprised he hadn’t been transported elsewhere, but he somehow didn’t think it was over.
As they entered the transporter room, the deck shuddered slightly. Duffy immediately know what had happened.
“That was a torpedo launch! What is blazes is going on up there?”
Roth was at the transporter console. Duffy slid in beside him. “We’re still not in transporter range.” He glanced at the sensor display, then did a double take. “There’s another ship registering out there.”
Omthon leaned closer to see. “Do you recognize it?”
“Oh yeah,” said Duffy, feeling another torpedo fire, “I recognize it. And I think Commander Gomez does too.”
* * *
“Torpedo away,” said Stevens. He watched the torpedo streak toward Enigma, heading straight for its heart. But the torpedo wasn’t designed to penetrate it, or even touch it.
It would explode just short of Enigma’s surface, and a carefully tuned magnetic plasma burst would shred Enigma’s holograms like confetti.
* * *
Duffy watched the screen anxiously. “The Roebling is trying to get multiple transporter locks on us, probably to beam the three of us troublemakers off the ship, but they can’t do it while our shields are up.”
“We’re almost to Starbase 12,” said Roth, his fingers flexing nervously over the console.
Omthon looked at Duffy. “They’ll have to drop shields to
beam the Chinook people on board. We’ve got a problem.”
“What,” said Duffy sarcastically, “another one?”
* * *
P8 watched the sliding temperature scale on the wall console, her front leg hovering over the control. Just a little more. A little more. Now.
* * *
Soloman watched the torpedo sail past his module, and he did not hesitate to follow as it approached Enigma. Bynars did not have the excessive sensitivity to glare that humans had, so he had instructed the viewport not to polarize, as he would still be able to see everything.
Then it happened.
The torpedo exploded into an expanding ball of yellow plasma that struck Enigma. The force fields shimmered with arcs of energy, and the holograms began to flicker. At last, Enigma would be revealed.
“Good luck, my friends,” said Soloman, surprised at his words, especially given that there was nobody there to hear.
* * *
Stevens watched the tactical console in disbelief. “Captain, there’s a message coming from inside Enigma. It’s from Commander Gomez. It says—” His gut suddenly knotted, and misery crept into his voice. “It says, ‘Life or death, do not disrupt Enigma. Do not fire on Enigma.’”
* * *
“Something’s happening,” said Omthon, looking at the exterior view on a wall-mounted viewscreen. As he watched, the floating top that was Starbase 12 flickered, as did the Roebling flying close formation with them, the blue planet in the background, and the very sky itself.
“We’re too late,” said Roth, his face turning pale.
Duffy pushed him aside, scanning frantically for the combadges he knew would be there. For a moment, there were thousands, and then there were only three. “I’ve got a lock! Energizing!”
Three stunned Starfleet crewmen materialized on the transporter pad, but Duffy knew it wasn’t enough.
“Great Emerald gods,” said Omthon, staring at the screen, dumbstruck. “There must be millions of them, and they don’t have a chance.”
Chapter
11
Soloman’s eyes widened. Something was wrong.
As the holograms faded, there should have been a ship, a hull, but there was only space, and that space was not empty.
There was a vast cloud: unidentifiable pieces of machinery, most no bigger than his module. A few ships, most of them looking abandoned and derelict, some eroded as though by long corrosion.
But mostly there were bodies, beings, people flailing about, horrified as they found themselves dumped, unprotected, into space.
Soloman reacted instinctively. He saw a being near him, six-legged, pink-skinned, huge blue eyes that shined with both terror and intelligence.
He activated the thrusters, simultaneously extending a manipulator arm from the pod to grab the floating body. Two meters short, the pod stopped and rebounded.
He’d hit something. A force field.
Soloman accessed the module’s sensors and scanned the cloud. He read air, and several other exotic breathing mixtures, encased in millions of individual force-field bubbles.
Then he looked up again. He’d missed something the first time, because it blended in with the stars. In fact, it looked like a cluster of stars, but there were far too many of them.
It took him a while to realize there was one star for each bubble.
* * *
Captain Newport stared openmouthed at the viewscreen, his face ashen. He turned to look at Gomez and blinked, like a man waking from a dream. “I’ve done something terribly wrong, haven’t I?”
She glanced over at him, still transfixed by the screen. It seemed as if everything that could go wrong had, and yet it was somehow working.
The Chinook crew were safe; the Lincoln was, in more ways than one, free of Enigma; and Enigma’s countless unwilling passengers were still alive, though for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out how.
“In the end, Captain, you did the absolute best thing you could do, even if you didn’t know you were doing it.” She glanced at him, trying to look reassuring. “This isn’t your fault.”
“Captain,” said the ops officer. “We’re being hailed by the da Vinci, sir. I’m reading her thirty kilometers off our port bow, though I can’t tell you how she got there, or what happened to Starbase 12. It’s like we jumped thirty light-years in an instant.”
“We didn’t go anywhere, Lieutenant.” Newport looked over at Gomez. “Right, Commander?”
Before Gomez could answer, her combadge chirped. “Sonnie, it’s Kieran. Meet us down at the transporter room. And, ah, bring Captain Newport, if he’s in the mood to come. There’s someone here you really should see.”
* * *
Gold ran to the hangar deck. He had to see this with his own eyes.
As the outer doors opened, he saw Enigma, spread out before him, re-forming itself. One by one, the bubbles of air transformed into opaque, golden holographic bubbles, no longer hidden from view.
At first they were scattered, but then they began to cluster together, blending, rebuilding, and reinventing what it had been before.
As the full shape of Enigma began to re-form, Gold saw a dark speck, moving rapidly against the golden mass, a speck that rapidly grew larger and resolved into the sleek form of an Intrepid-class starship.
The U.S.S. Lincoln was back.
His combadge chirped. It was Corsi.
“Captain, the Lincoln is returning hails. Our missing people are on board, safe and sound, and they have the missing freighter crew member and the Chinook personnel as well.”
Despite himself, he broke into a broad smile, and barely kept from laughing. He was glad Corsi wasn’t there to see. At times like this, he wasn’t the most dignified officer in the fleet.
But it seemed she didn’t need to see. “Enjoy the moment, Captain. Corsi out.”
She understood. She was coming along, this Corsi. Like him, she knew it was all over but the shouting. Like him, she knew that apparently, this time at least, he’d done the right thing. And she knew what that meant.
She’s going to make somebody a fine first officer some day, maybe even have a ship of her own.
“Captain Core-Breach,” he said out loud. “It has a nice ring to it.”
* * *
Gomez and Newport arrived at the transporter room just as Roth emerged with the Chinook party, looking confused, but unharmed. Roth made hesitant eye-contact with Newport.
“Sorry, Captain,” was all he said.
Newport pushed his lips together and nodded sadly. “You did all right, Roth.” He patted him on the shoulder. “We’ll talk later.”
They stepped into the transporter room to see Duffy and Omthon standing with the holographic Bolian. Newport seemed puzzled.
“Captain,” said Duffy, gesturing at the Bolian, “meet a real alien imposter.”
The Bolian bowed his head in greeting. “We call ourselves the Quanta. We owe you thanks, for waking us from our long sleep. We owe you apology for the trouble we have inadvertently caused yourselves and others we have encountered. It is time you knew our story.”
“You never developed warp drive,” said Duffy.
“We did not know that was unusual until we met you. We encountered other beings with this technology, but by then we were not—lucid. Only in our stories and dreams could we do such things, but we did not give up on our dreams of the stars. One day, some of us determined that we would go, no matter how long it took. But by that time our stories were quite developed. They were what we were, and we brought them with us.”
“Your holoprograms,” said Gomez. “You built your entire ship out of holotechnology, self-powered, self-sustaining.”
“It worked well. We visited many worlds, until we reached the void where stars were far apart. Somewhere, on the edge of that gulf, we fell into our dreams and did not come out. From time to time, we encountered other beings such as yourselves, but by then, our stories had grown stale and repetitive, and we welcomed
the new stories these beings brought with them.”
“You were like me,” said Newport, “denying reality, incorporating anything that challenged it into your fantasies.”
“Until,” said the Bolian, “like you, Captain, we were forced to confront reality in a way we could not deny.”
“What I don’t understand,” said Duffy, “is how you and all your ‘passengers’ survived without your holotechnology, or even how you’re maintaining this form. At minimum. Your systems are only now rebooting.”
“Your ship disrupted our independent holographic projectors, the telepathic systems that maintained our ship’s systems and ran our gross simulations. But we have developed our holotechnology over a long time. We are more intimately associated with it than you imagine. Each of us has individual holographic capabilities as well. These forms I have adopted, have aided in communication, but it is time that you saw us as we really are.”
Abruptly the Bolian faded. It brightened into the familiar ball of light, then that too dimmed, revealing what was hidden within.
The device was as they had glimpsed in the alien marketplace. About the size of a human torso, perhaps a little larger, it floated a meter above the deck, apparently supported by antigravs or force beams. The curved surface was intricately inlaid with tiny, jeweled hexagons, which Gomez guessed corresponded to the holodiodes on their holodecks, though vastly more sophisticated.
But their eyes were drawn irresistibly to the transparent dome on top, and the tiny being housed inside.
It was covered with brown fur, and looked at them with large, yellow, eyes. The top of it was domed, and Gomez supposed that was the brain case. Under this was a tiny, flattened, body, and four useless, atrophied, limbs.
Various tubes and wires connected the body to the machine, providing life support. Gomez doubted the entity could live more than a few minutes without it.
Gomez would have loved to study the technology the “holobody” represented, but there was a shimmer, and as though shy, the creature was again shrouded in a glowing ball of light.
Enigma Ship Page 9
