Living Memory

by Christopher L. Bennett

  Still, Daibak was trying to make the best of the situation, reassuring the nervous or impatient guests that they shouldn’t have long to wait. Most of these flare events had been harmless, and they only seemed to strike each system once, so as soon as the current one was over, it would not come again. And they might get a marvelous fireworks display out of it if the flares came close enough.

  So it was that Daibak was hosting a stargazing party on the roof of the hotel. Midoren was one of the younger, smaller cities in the interior of Denobula’s single vast continent, on the fringes of the enormous desert at its heart, so it suffered less from light pollution than the vast, never-sleeping capital of Gronim City. At this time of year, when the distant but bright companion star of Denobula’s sun was absent from the nighttime sky, you could get a fine view of the galaxy at night when the weather was clear (as it usually was this far into the interior). Right now it was only a couple of hours past dusk, not yet prime stargazing time, but Denobulan nights were long, so there was plenty of time. Daibak was happy to keep the party going for as long as it took.

  “Hey.” Daibak tapped Orat, the young concierge, on the shoulder as he passed by. “They collide without making a sound, and never break no matter how often they collide. What are they?”

  Orat sighed. “You already did that one. It’s your eyelids.”

  “Oh. Really? Oh, well.” He thought for a moment. “They always look down when moving forward—”

  “Your nostrils.”

  Daibak sighed. “It’s this lockdown. No new guests, no new inspiration.”

  “Or you just ran out of body parts.”

  “Not all my riddles are about body parts.”

  “But too few are about the interesting ones.”

  Daibak scowled at Orat’s sly grin. “Oh, go refill the ice buckets.”

  A minor outcry from the other side of the rooftop caught his attention. It was the Kanums, a monogamous Antaran couple on their honeymoon, pointing out to the sky above the desert that stretched beyond the city edge. Following their gestures, Daibak spotted an effervescent flicker of light over the horizon. He followed the other guests as they congregated around the Kanums to ooh and aah at the sight. Even Daibak, who had seen plenty in his life despite not traveling far from home, was impressed by how close and vivid the flickers appeared for something far out in space.

  But as successive clusters of flashing pinpoints came and went, as the phenomenon rose higher in the night sky, the flickers seemed to draw even closer, growing more painfully bright. Daibak imagined he could almost hear a distant rumbling, as if they were a thunderstorm over the horizon. It had to be his imagination, surely. Even a lifelong planet-lubber like him knew that sound didn’t travel through space.

  Then the rumbling became clearer, louder. It was more than a sound—the ground was trembling. Still the intermittent clusters of pinpoint flashes grew nearer and brighter, spread higher and wider across the sky.

  Then they erupted out of the desert sands with geyser-like columns of vapor. The Kanums screamed. They weren’t the only ones. Daibak realized the lights weren’t just rising from behind the curve of the planet—they were rising out of the planet itself!

  And they were spreading out to engulf the whole city.

  The crowd’s paralysis at the inconceivable sight finally broke as the crackling thunderclaps grew ever louder and nearer. The quaking of the ground grew worse, and a hot wind began to blow across the rooftop. Tenants pushed each other aside in their rush for the stairwell, and Daibak called out, urging them to stay calm and lie flat on the roof.

  But few of the guests listened, instead crowding against the stairwell door and trying in vain to force their way inside. When Daibak tried to intervene bodily and drag them apart, he ended up succumbing to the press of bodies, falling to the roof beneath the feet of the panicked crowd.

  After what seemed like ages, a strong hand caught his arm and pulled him free. He looked up to see Orat staring at him solicitously. “Are you all right, boss?”

  “Oh, Orat, thank you! I promise, I’ll never tell another riddle.”

  “We’ve got to get away!”

  “No, we’ve got to get through to them before they crush each other to death! They’re our guests, our responsibi—”

  Then the entire rooftop bucked, and he was almost blinded as a surge of lightning-bright pinpoint bursts rose straight up through the roof.

  U.S.S. Reliant

  Orbiting Denobula

  “The flare’s coming out of the planet?” Captain Terrell cried in disbelief.

  Pavel Chekov looked up at the bigger man who loomed over the science station. “It emerged inside the planet, yes, sir,” he said. “The planet’s orbital motion is carrying it past the emergence zone. It should be clear within a few minutes.”

  “But what’s it doing to the planet in the meantime?”

  “The micro-wormholes are quite small, sir. The energy they release is intense, but brief.” Chekov studied his scans. “There are some seismic and meteorological disruptions, but mostly in the uninhabited interior. Luckily most of the population is concentrated around the capital region, well away from the affected area.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Rem Azem-Os. The Aurelian flexed her wings as she stood behind the vacant command chair. “I thought the vacuum flares centered around the positions the planets occupied in the past.”

  “Relative to their stars’ positions, yes,” Chekov said, “with a degree of uncertainty. But it’s been almost exactly twenty-eight Denobulan years since the Enterprise’s visit, so the planet’s roughly back in the same spot. Or close enough to fall within the margin of—”

  He broke off at an alarm from his console. “Bozhe moi. There’s a small city, Midoren, on the edge of the emergence area. One of the wormhole clusters has passed through it!”

  “Damage?” Terrell asked.

  Chekov tightened the scan, adjusting the frequencies and detection protocols. “Extensive disruption to the power grid. Electrical discharges and blowouts. Vehicle crashes. It’s night there, but Denobulans rarely sleep.” He looked up at Terrell. “A few building collapses. The wormholes must have caused structural damage, or the thermal shock to the atmosphere may have—”

  “It doesn’t matter why,” Azem-Os interrupted. “We need to help those people. Can we transport the injured?”

  “There’s heavy interference,” Chekov told her. “We’d have to get within… approximately eight hundred kilometers.”

  The Aurelian stepped forward to the helm station and leaned over Beach. “Stoney, can you get us in closer?”

  “Up to a point, Commander, but there’s no predicting where a new surge might pop up.”

  “That’s a risk we have to take,” Terrell told him, backing up his first officer. “Just stay alert.” He descended to his command chair and activated the comm switch. “Terrell to sickbay. Doctor Wilder, stand by to receive casualties. And we’re going to need medical and rescue teams on the ground.”

  While the captain coordinated with sickbay, Chekov studied the worrying seismic readings from Midoren. A thought struck him, and he ran some quick computations to support it. Once the captain was done speaking, he called out across the bridge to the weapons station. “Nizhoni! I think we can damp the ground tremors with a tractor beam. I’m sending the parameters to gravity control, but you’ll need to ride them manually.”

  “On it,” the long-haired tactical officer said, crossing the front of the bridge to the stand-up gravity control station just starboard of the main viewscreen. Within moments, she had locked Reliant’s powerful tractor beams onto the surface near Midoren, spreading out their focus and fine-tuning their gravitational energies to damp the tremors endangering the city. Chekov saw her smile, and as a former tactical officer himself, he understood her pleasure at being able to use her targeting skills to protect lives rather than take them.

  “In transporter range,” Beach called out.

  “
Transporter rooms report evac underway,” Kyle announced a moment later.

  Terrell’s eyes were on the vast field of quantum fireworks that filled the space above the planet surface. “I don’t like being this close to that thing. The faster we get those people out, the better.”

  “The planet should be clear of the effect in another minute or so,” Chekov said. “Barring aftershocks, we’ll be able to focus on putting out the fires in its wake—literal or otherwise.”

  “It’s lucky it didn’t hit the main population center,” Terrell said. “Nearly twelve billion people packed over such a small percentage of the planet.”

  “If anything, Captain,” Chekov replied, “it’s very unlucky that it hit a populated area at all, with most of the planet’s surface being empty. Not to mention all the volume of space around the planet where it could’ve—”

  The alert klaxon sounded. “New surge, directly below us!” Beach called.

  “Evasive!” Terrell barely had time to get the word out before the microflares penetrated the ship. The lights flickered and consoles sparked, and a clatter of loud bangs went off inside the bridge like firecrackers as the tiny but ultrahot pinpoints flash-heated the air like lightning bolts.

  Chekov screamed as a microflare passed through his right shoulder. Through the agony, he vaguely noticed a number of the science station’s displays and control panels sputtering and blowing out. A keening eagle cry pierced his already ringing and popping ears, and he realized Azem-Os must have been hit as well.

  It took a few moments for Chekov to rally his focus through the pain. Fortunately—or unfortunately—he was no stranger to dealing with pain and injury. Sulu and Uhura joked that he was the unluckiest man in Starfleet, getting injured with alarming frequency—though he countered that the unlucky ones were those who didn’t survive. He wasn’t sure he agreed with the saying that the things that didn’t kill him made him stronger. But at least they no longer surprised or overwhelmed him.

  Still, he found himself wishing for a Deltan empath to ease his pain right around now.

  Once he refocused outside himself, he found the bridge in a sorry state, ruddy under the emergency lighting, with multiple holes burned in various surfaces and the majority of the consoles damaged or inoperable. Azem-Os’s left wing hung limp from her back as she struggled to raise herself from a crouch, while Terrell comforted her and tried to keep her from overstraining herself.

  Still, the captain’s primary focus was on the viewscreen, which was awash with static, but in its clearer moments showed the planet surface drawing closer than it should. Chekov should have seen that coming. Reliant had been keeping station above Midoren at well below synchronous orbit, so with propulsion no doubt disrupted by the flare impact, they were moving too slowly to maintain altitude.

  “Beach, stabilize our orbit!” Terrell called, clearly recognizing the same thing.

  “Impulse engines won’t respond, sir! Trying to reroute!”

  “Thrusters?”

  “Partial thrusters only.”

  “Use the gyros, then. Try to get our nose up. Skip off the atmosphere like a stone.”

  Beach stared. “You sure, sir?”

  Terrell grinned and clapped his shoulder. “We had a few memorable crashes on the Sagittarius. I’ve thought about this kind of thing a lot.”

  “If you say so, Captain. Computing new attitude.”

  The ship began to judder as it passed through density variations in the thin outer atmosphere at high speed. Then it jostled sharply as it made its first “skip.” Chekov was knocked sideways, and the pain in his shoulder blacked him out for a moment. His perceptions were a blur of noise, jostling, and shouting voices, and he wondered if his luck had finally run out.

  * * *

  Chekov awoke to find himself on a couch in the officers’ lounge. Turning his head gingerly, he saw Azem-Os and the navigator, Ensign Sarhin, on adjacent couches. Azem-Os’s wing had been treated and placed in a sling, and a nurse was tending to Sarhin’s burned thigh. Chekov looked down at his shoulder to see it had already been treated and dressed.

  He spotted Captain Terrell standing nearby. “Captain…?”

  The big bearded man moved toward him and helped him sit up. “It’s okay, Pavel. Obviously we made it. But sickbay’s full of evacuees from Midoren. Plus we’re closer to the bridge here.”

  “Casualties?”

  “Up here, twenty-seven injured, but we didn’t lose anyone. Down there, our team and the Denobulan authorities are still searching, but there are dozens of dead already accounted for.”

  Chekov grimaced. “Is Reliant in any condition to help them?”

  The captain offered a reassuring smile. “I think you already helped a lot with that tractor beam idea. It could’ve been a lot worse. Midoren isn’t in an earthquake zone, so the buildings weren’t designed to handle them.

  “On the other hand, since Denobulans rarely sleep, most of them don’t have permanent homes, so at any given time you’ll find more of them outdoors than on most planets, even at night. That kept the toll from being higher.” He tilted his head. “You might be interested to know that one of the people we rescued is the grandson of Doctor Phlox, the CMO of Jonathan Archer’s Enterprise. He was very concerned about the guests and staff in his hotel. Luckily, we managed to rescue them all, and he’s down in sickbay now, regaling them all with riddles. But others weren’t so lucky,” he finished with a heavy sigh.

  Chekov was too worried to appreciate the historical trivia. “I feel so useless. We finally know where the flares will strike next, but have no way to prevent or contain them. And they keep getting bigger and more destructive.”

  Terrell grew somber. “Well, I’m afraid Reliant is out of the game, Pavel. We took heavy damage. It’ll take weeks in dry dock to get us back in action.”

  “Damn. We’ve been tracking this from the beginning. We can’t be taken out now.”

  The captain sat down next to him. “I’ve been thinking about that. We know these things are connected somehow to Federation or allied planets the Enterprise has visited.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, think about it, Pav. If you trace the Enterprise’s course back far enough, where will the trail eventually, inevitably, end up?”

  Chekov’s eyes widened. “Earth.”

  “Earth.”

  “We need to get back there.”

  Terrell tugged on the hem of his uniform jacket. “Reliant’s going to be under repairs here for some time. I need to stay with my ship, and to help with relief efforts. But this is your baby, Pavel. I’m willing to authorize your temporary transfer back to Starfleet Command on Earth, if that’s where you feel you need to be.”

  Chekov smiled at him. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  The captain grimaced. “Don’t thank me. If there’s one thing we learned today, it’s what can happen when you deliberately head toward one of these things.”

  Chapter Eight

  U.S.S. Enterprise

  “Captain on the bridge!”

  As Spock stepped out of the turbolift alcove, he turned to Cadet Marar Ferat, who had announced him from the communications station. “At ease, Cadet. For future reference, that ritual is not required aboard the Enterprise. I am aware that some commanding officers prefer it, but I have always found it redundant. If bridge personnel are properly alert, they may discern for themselves whether or not I am present. And I expect all bridge personnel to comport themselves with equal professionalism in either circumstance.”

  The curly-haired Cygnian flushed in abashment. “Aye, Captain Spock. Understood.”

  Lieutenant Ledoux rose from the captain’s chair as Spock approached. “I relieve you, Lieutenant.”

  The dark-complexioned woman, a veteran of the Enterprise crew from its second five-year tour, nodded. “I stand relieved.”

  Spock took her report, then circled the outer deck of the bridge, checking the performance of the cadet crew one by one. Pryce-Jones at engineer
ing, Suarez at tactical, and Nadel at sciences gave their reports crisply and efficiently, though they had little to report beyond the commonplace routine of a starship in the second day of a four-day journey.

  When he reached the helm console, however, he frowned at the readouts and addressed Cadet T’Lara. “Warp velocity has diminished by zero point eight percent relative to power expenditure.”

  The young Vulcan woman looked up at him calmly. “I am aware of the discrepancy, sir. Our course is transverse to a subspace gradient. Maintaining course against its pull requires diverting a portion of warp power.”

  The problem was commonplace enough; a human would probably analogize it to crossing a river perpendicular to its current and being pushed downstream. But T’Lara’s response to the problem provoked a raised eyebrow. “I see. As I recall, you studied helm operations under Lieutenant Commander Grodnick. Correct?”

  “Affirmative, sir.”

  “Had you studied under Commander Sulu, he would most likely have informed you of a more efficient method of compensating for such a gradient. Adjust the relative timing of the warp nacelles in proportion to the fourth root of the displacement rate, with the bias in favor of the nacelle opposite the direction of the gradient. This will cancel the lateral displacement with no added power demand.”

  T’Lara raised both her brows. “Understood, sir. An elegant solution. Why is it not in the standard texts?”

  “Perhaps because Commander Sulu has not yet written one. However, I shall speak to Professor Grodnick upon our return. Carry on, Cadet.”

  Before Spock could take the command chair, Ferat spoke up. “Captain Spock? Priority transmission from Admiral Cartwright of Starfleet Security.”

  Spock nodded. He had expected such a call for the past hour, since the news of the destruction on Denobula reached the Enterprise. “Have it relayed to my quarters. Lieutenant Ledoux, you have the bridge.”