by Dave Stern
Understood.
Hoshi and Green exchanged smiles.
The console beeped again.
“Power surge continuing,” she said, reading the telemetry. “I’m reading…”
“Sensor scan initiating,” Green said, and at that instant, a soft indigo light suddenly filled every square inch of the small ship’s bridge. Hoshi felt a tingling sensation on her skin.
“I believe we are currently experiencing a spectral matrix scan,” Green said quietly.
Hoshi nodded. Telemetry said the scan was a low-energy EM field, containing multiple frequencies, some of them mirror images of each other. Interesting. If she was reading this right—and she thought she was—that would create a comb effect, reinforcing certain wavelengths and allowing others to—
She cursed under her breath.
“What’s the matter?” Green asked.
“The shielding—it’s not going to do any good.”
“What do you mean?”
“The scan beam will pass right through. They’ll pick up the soldiers down there, and they’ll think we’re trying to ambush them, and then…”
She cursed again, and shook her head. Why didn’t anyone ever listen to her? Why hadn’t Jaedez—
The blue light disappeared all at once.
And a split second later, the power went.
The ship was dark for an instant, and then emergency power kicked on.
“What just happened?” Green asked.
Hoshi held herself back—just barely—from punching the console.
“I think we’ve just been disciplined.”
The terminal directly in front of her came to life once more.
What did you do up there?
Hoshi was about to key back an angry response when she noted another power buildup aboard the Antianna ship. Diken raised shields. This time she didn’t try to stop him.
“Brace yourself,” she told Green, watching the telemetry and the viewscreen at the same time, expecting to see weapons fire.
But she didn’t.
She felt, once more, a familiar tingling on her skin.
“Another sort of scan,” Green said.
Hoshi started to nod, then shook her head.
“No,” she said. “Not a scan. A transporter beam.”
Green’s eyes widened.
At that instant, several things happened at once.
Hoshi felt the cold of space on her skin, and the air around her sucked violently away.
Elder Green screamed.
The ship exploded.
Thirty
Archer stepped back from the open deck panel, and stood.
“That should do it,” he said. “Governor?”
Sen, in the command chair, nodded, and tested the controls. Helm, weapons, communications…all superbly responsive. He sent his thanks via the implant to the Roia subprogram, and then turned to Archer.
“Excellent work, Captain. I commend you.”
“You’re welcome. So what’s next? Where do we go from here?”
“We?” Sen frowned.
The last few hours, Archer had spoken as if he and the governor were actually allies in this matter. As if they had some sort of common interest. Sleep deprivation, the governor guessed. Or a nutritional imbalance. Either of which could be easily fixed, Sen supposed, should he so desire to return the human to optimum functionality.
Unfortunately, for the captain’s sake, Sen had no such desire at the moment.
“Where do we go from here?” The governor shook his head. “Where you go from here—after you seal the last access panel, of course—is back to the brig, where you will wait until I summon you again. Now…”
Sen waved him toward the turbolift.
Archer ignored him, and turned to face the viewscreen.
“From the heading you just set—it looks to me like we’re heading toward the galactic core. Which will take us through Antianna space.”
Sen frowned. “Not that it’s any of your business, but…you are correct. Though it is hardly ‘Antianna’ space, as you call it. Rather, it is an arm of Confederacy territory…”
“An arm the Antianna seem to have claimed for their own. Are you sure you want to take the ship through there?”
Sen was too shocked to respond for a moment.
For the human to question him this way, not that there was anyone around to hear, but the sheer effrontery of the man…
Sen pressed a button on the control device, and held it there for a good long moment.
He watched the stars pass by then, until the human had regained control enough of his limbs to stand, and move of his own accord.
“Go to the brig. Immediately,” Sen said.
Archer smiled at him then—a ghoulish sight, considering the bruise on his right temple, no doubt acquired during his thrashing about a moment ago.
“You’re not behaving in a logical manner,” the captain said. “Why don’t you sell me back to Starfleet, and then head toward the rim worlds? Everybody wins, then. You get your money, I get my freedom, the ship gets safe passage…”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” Sen roared, and was about to press the button on the control device again when…
“Governor.”
He paused a moment, and looked around the bridge. The voice came over the Klingon com system.
The voice was, unaccountably, familiar.
“Roia?”
“Governor, the human raises an interesting point. Why not lessen the danger to all of us by…”
“Roia, what in the world—why are you talking through these systems? Why not the implant? And why do you care what the human says? He…”
Sen frowned, and realized all at once, this wasn’t the first time the captain, and the computer, had spoken.
“Governor Sen, the captain is correct. Your behavior is illogical. Your behavior is self-destructive, and in addition, endangers this program.”
Sen slammed a hand down on the arm of the command chair.
“You are a machine!” he yelled. “You will do as you are told, when you are told, and the first thing you will do is open the airlock on this man,” he said, turning and pointing at Archer—
Who was inside the open access panel.
Who had a thick handful of cabling in one hand, and a cutting tool in the other.
Who, as Sen watched, slashed neatly through the cabling, and let it fall.
Sen screamed, and in his mind, felt Roia die.
Even as the governor fell to the deck, Archer was up and out of the crawl space, diving for the control device. His hand closed around it a millisecond before Sen recovered, and he yanked it from the governor’s grasp and threw it clear across the bridge.
Sen rose to his feet, fury on his face.
“You’re an idiot,” he said. “Do you know what you’ve done?”
“I have a pretty good idea.”
“You have no idea at all.” The governor, all at once, assumed a ready position. “I will enjoy tearing you limb from limb.”
Archer couldn’t help it. He laughed out loud.
“I can see you don’t believe me a credible opponent in unarmed combat,” Sen said. “Let me warn you that I have decades of training in my past. That I am an expert in twelve forms of unarmed combat. That I have killed over a dozen men and women with my bare hands.”
And with that, the governor took a step forward, and began stalking the captain. He moved with a sinuous grace that belied his age.
Archer wondered, suddenly, if he’d underestimated the man.
“I will teach you,” he said, “to respect your elders.”
Archer took a step back, and almost stumbled.
Sen laughed, and attacked.
Archer dodged that blow, and then another. And then a third, and a fourth.
“You can’t run forever,” Sen said.
“I don’t need to run.” Archer raised his own right then, and formed it into a fist. “You see this?”
Sen frowned. “Of course.”
“Keep an eye on it,” Archer said, and then clocked the governor with his left.
Sen went down like he’d been poleaxed. He stayed down.
The captain smiled, and walked to the command chair.
And then saw why Sen had called him an idiot.
The cables he pulled had disconnected Roia. But the Klingon system hadn’t come back on-line.
The ship’s computer system was dead. It had no brain.
It drifted on, helpless, deeper into Antianna territory.
Thirty-One
She floated in space for some time.
It was a strange sort of space, though. No stars. No sky of any kind, no ships, planets, or satellites. Only metal—silver-gray, dull in some places, shiny in others, shimmering all around her, looking solid at one instant, liquid at the next. Hoshi reached out and touched it at one point; the surface gave beneath her fingers like a sponge. She felt like if she pushed hard enough, if she could build up enough speed and momentum, she could sink right down into it, pass through into…what, she didn’t know.
The metal formed the walls that surrounded her, a vast empty dome-shaped space that could have held several analysis chambers with room to spare. Hoshi had no idea where she was, or how long she’d been there. Was she inside the Antianna ship? That was the most likely explanation, but for all she knew, she could be halfway across the Alpha Quadrant, a week removed from the events that had led her here.
From time to time, Elder Green’s corpse floated up alongside her.
Something had gone wrong in the materialization process, she guessed. Green’s face was distorted in agony, as if she’d been torn inside out. Hoshi had seen something similar happen once before, on Enterprise. A terrible accident. She couldn’t imagine how painful it must have been. At least it had happened quickly.
Something had happened to her too, in transit. She felt, for the first time ever, as if she really had been taken apart and put back together again. She ached all over. She was having trouble concentrating, too. She recalled the ship exploding, the cold of space—had she actually been exposed to a vacuum? Maybe something had happened to her brain. Maybe she was in shock.
A queer sort of queasiness permeated every fiber of her being, a vague sense of being disconnected from reality. Maybe, she thought, it was because of the weightlessness. Travis was always going on about how he liked the sensation, but she could never stand it. She needed the feel of solid ground beneath her feet—or at least the illusion of it. She needed—what was the word again? Oh yes.
“Gravity,” she whispered.
And began to float, slowly, down toward the floor of the vast, empty space.
As she fell, it was as if she was returning to reality. Her mind cleared.
Her feet landed on metal, cold and smooth against her skin.
She was barefoot, Hoshi realized.
No. More than that.
She was naked.
She blinked, and looked around again.
The space she was in was indeed huge, and totally empty. Save for her, and Elder Green’s corpse, which lay a few meters distant, having come to ground as well. First things first, Hoshi thought, and went to check the body. Definitely dead. No question about it. So some sort of problem in the materialization process. A mistake—she hoped.
She turned slowly in place, scanning the room. No breaks or irregularities in the surface anywhere, no apparent light source, no way in or out. Metal, metal everywhere, as far as the eye could see. She bent and touched the floor—solid as steel—and then did the same along a few spots on the wall. Same. So what she had experienced before—the surface giving beneath her touch—was either an illusion on her part, a symptom of whatever had been going on in her head, or…
Or she didn’t know what. The laws of physics didn’t apply?
Some strange laws were at work here, that was for sure. The way she’d just thought about wanting solid ground beneath her feet, and then all of a sudden there was gravity…
She frowned.
No—she hadn’t just thought it. She’d actually said the word out loud.
“Gravity.”
The floor took hold of her, and pulled her down. She felt the breath being crushed out of her.
“Too much,” she gasped involuntarily, and just like that, the weight pressing down on her was gone.
My God, she thought, and just in time stopped herself from saying out loud, because…
Because what?
Because there was something here with her. Something that heard her every word, and…
This was too much. Too strange.
She took a deep breath.
“Clothes,” she said.
The floor next to her shimmered, there was no other word for it, and then puddled, and then in that puddle, in the span of less than a second, an Enterprise coverall suddenly appeared, as if it had grown there.
She picked it up, and put it on, and of course it fit perfectly, there had been no doubt in her mind that it would, it was hers, a replica, one beamed over from her closet aboard Enterprise, or S-12, what did it matter? It was all magic, technology far beyond anything she’d previously encountered, utterly and entirely alien.
And with that thought, Hoshi realized, all at once, what the next word out of her mouth had to be. A plea, an imperative, the key to understanding what was happening not just here but back where she had come from, on Procyron and the trading routes surrounding it, in the analysis chamber aboard S-12 and the bridge aboard Enterprise.
She straightened then, and cleared her throat.
“Antianna,” she said
For an instant, nothing happened.
Then along the far wall, the metal began to shimmer. A gap formed in the surface, and within seconds had taken on the shape of a doorway.
Within that space, a figure began to take form, an indistinct silhouette at first that gradually began to come clearer.
She heard, in her head, Doctor Teodoro’s voice: “What is going to happen when we meet up with an alien race that doesn’t have two arms and two legs, and doesn’t think like we do, doesn’t organize concepts the way we do?”
Hoshi thought that maybe, just maybe, she was about to find out.
And then the doorway vanished, the figure took a step forward into the room, and Hoshi’s mouth dropped open in surprise.
“Theera?”
Face blank, expression completely unreadable, the Andorian began walking toward her.
Thirty-Two
“Theera?” Hoshi said. “What are you doing here? How…”
Her voice trailed off.
The Andorian, ignoring her entirely, knelt down next to Elder Green’s body, and then laid her hands on it.
She closed her eyes, and the floor beneath Green began to shimmer.
The metal of the ship pooled up and around the Elder’s body, surrounding it, coating it, covering it.
This isn’t happening, Hoshi thought. This can’t be happening.
But it was.
Within seconds, Green’s corpse was gone, as if it had never existed at all, and the floor was completely and perfectly smooth once more.
Theera rose to her feet. She turned toward Hoshi.
And then she spoke.
“Ondeanna,” she said.
The word lacked tone, inflection, accent; the Andorian’s voice, too, sounded strange to Hoshi’s ear. But the look in her eyes, on her face…
A memory flashed across Hoshi’s mind then, an image of Theera the instant she’d broken the restraints back aboard the Conani vessel.
“Antianna,” she’d said then.
“Ondeanna,” she said now, and stepped forward.
A plea. An imperative.
“What do you want?” Hoshi asked. “How did you…”
The Andorian reached up with both hands then, and before Hoshi could react, placed them on either side of her face.
It was like being suddenly plugged into an
electric socket.
Energy surged through her body, and Hoshi screamed.
The pain was unbearable, and yet, the pain was incidental.
Mostly, what she felt was overwhelmed. Images swirled through her head, some from her past, some from places she’d never been to but recognized anyway, some too strange to comprehend at all.
She was back in the rain forest, back among the Huantamos, striving to help them understand her.
She was back aboard Enterprise, listening over and over again to the fifty-seven pulses.
She was down on Procyron, in the Trade Assembly, as Malcolm pointed out Theera for the first time.
She was looking at Theera, huddled on her bunk aboard S-12, and then at Theera again, here, wherever here was, as the Andorian laid hands on Elder Green’s body.
She was looking at Theera, and then she was Theera.
A blue-skinned child, running through a warren of ice caves, being chased by a dozen other blue-skinned children.
Meeting Jakon, and making love to him, once, twice, a dozen times.
Listening to the fifty-seven pulses, watching the Antianna ship draw closer.
Watching the bridge explode around her, smelling the vessel burn, seeing her shipmates die. Dying herself, blue skin floating in the black of space.
Blackness everywhere. And then…
Blue again, shading toward aqua. The color of the ocean, near her grandfather’s house.
A Barreon uniform. A Barreon soldier. One, at first, and then dozens, gathered in a room somewhere, leaning over her, looks of excitement on their faces. The nearest steps forward, and speaks.
His face is familiar to her. She knows his name. Urmstran. He is an officer, and an engineer.
He is the creator.
“You understand me, don’t you?”
“Yes, I understand you,” she says, and her voice sounds strange to her ear. Metallic. Mechanical.
He smiles, and turns to the others.
“Autonomy, my friends. We have succeeded.”
The world goes dark, and then light again.
She is everywhere then, seeing a thousand things at once. The happenings in dozens of different rooms, in dozens of different buildings, aboard dozens of different ships. She hears things too—a thousand conversations at the same time—and somehow she is able to keep track of them all, assimilate the meaning of each and every word spoken.
