Part 10 (1/2)

”Denied,” Dax said. ”I need you on the s.h.i.+p, a.n.a.lyzing the data we have in hand.”

Disappointed, Ta.r.s.es replied, ”Aye, sir. I just hope we haven't missed anything.”

”Time is short, Doctor,” said Dax. ”And the perfect is the enemy of the good. Make do with what we've got-and do it fast.”

Its hunger was all.

Radiant sh.e.l.ls of organic matter glowed in the empty s.p.a.ces that surrounded it. They appeared and vanished in bright curtains of energy, in columns of fire shot down from someplace far above this crude prison of thwarted desire. They skated the surface of the gravity well, clutching blinding sparks.

Temptations, one and all.

Streams of data moved faster than light, traveling between the sh.e.l.ls and the sky and their own glowing stones. There were fewer of the sh.e.l.ls now, and they continued to diminish in numbers.

Panic pushed the hunger in pursuit of a cl.u.s.ter of sh.e.l.ls. So little of its strength remained that even gravity, nature's most feeble instrument, threatened to overcome it and drag it down to its final dissipation in the silicon sea.

It risked everything to pierce the new stone: every iota of will, every drop of fear. Annihilation or escape-either would be better than limbo.

All that mattered now was the sky.

2168.

10.

The flight of the Columbia had lasted sixty-three days, and it had lasted just over twelve years.

The high-frequency overdrive whine of the impulse engines fell rapidly as a pinpoint of light on the bridge's main viewer brightened and grew larger. Captain Hernandez gripped the armrests of her chair as her s.h.i.+p s.h.i.+mmied around her, its inertial dampers struggling to compensate for the extreme stresses of rapid deceleration from relativistic velocity.

Lieutenant Brynn Mealia, the gamma-s.h.i.+ft helmsman, declared in a soft Irish lilt, ”Thirty seconds to orbit.”

”Katrin,” Hernandez said to Ensign Gunnarsdottir, the bridge engineering officer, ”can we sh.o.r.e up the dampers?”

Gunnarsdottir started flipping switches and adjusting dials on her console. ”Patching in emergency battery power, Captain.”

Seconds later the s.h.i.+p's pa.s.sage became smoother, and Hernandez used the moments to lament the years that she had let pa.s.s by her s.h.i.+p, her crew, and herself. For weeks she had been imagining Earth spinning in a blur, its billions of people playing out the dramas of their lives while the crew of the Columbia pushed themselves beyond the normal boundaries of s.p.a.ce-time-cheating it, evading it, living in the past while the rest of the galaxy moved on without them. She had heard the grumblings of her crew grow increasingly bitter as the weeks had dragged past, and just a few days-months?-earlier she had heard one of the s.h.i.+p's MACO troopers jokingly refer to the Columbia as ”the Flying Dutchman.”

”Slowing to full impulse,” Mealia said. ”Three-quarters impulse...half...one-quarter impulse, Captain.”

A lush blue-green sphere dominated the viewscreen. It looked like a pristine, uncolonized world, with no traces of habitation. Hernandez looked over her shoulder at Lieutenant el-Rashad, who was monitoring a sensor control station. ”You're sure the energy readings from the planet are artificial?”

The thin, serious-looking second officer lifted his eyes from his console and said, ”Positive, Captain.” Thumbing a few switches, he added, ”I can't lock in on the sources, but I can narrow it down and switch to a visual scan. Magnification to five hundred.” On the viewscreen, at the edge of a greenish swath of richly forested planetary surface, she beheld what looked like a scintillating jewel.

Hernandez stood from her chair and studied the image on the screen. ”Is that a city?”

”If not, it's the strangest rock formation I've ever seen,” said Commander Fletcher, who was watching from beside the weapons console with Lieutenant Thayer. The first officer had a quizzical look on her face as she stared at the viewscreen. ”Kalil, are we reading any life-forms at those coordinates?”

El-Rashad looked surprised by the question. ”We're not reading anything at those coordinates, Commander. There's some kind of scattering field blocking our scans of the city.”

Hernandez looked back at her bridge officers. ”Thayer, can you compensate for that?”

Thayer poked at her console. ”Negative, Captain.” She patched in a new image on the main viewer: another brilliant speck on the surface. ”We're seeing dozens of cities, spread around the planet. They're all extremely similar in ma.s.s and configuration...but we can't get precise readings, because they're all protected by scattering fields with an average radius of two hundred kilometers.”

Every new report deepened Hernandez's curiosity, and for a moment the heartbreak of a dozen lost years was forgotten. ”What about the other planets in the system?”

”Uninhabited, Captain,” said el-Rashad. ”No evidence of colonization or exploration.”

Thinking ahead, Hernandez asked, ”How's the air down there?”

”Breathable,” said el-Rashad. ”Maybe a bit on the thick side for most of us.”

Hernandez pondered the top-down image of the city on the viewscreen for a moment longer, captivated by its symmetry and its mystery. Then she returned to her chair and sat down. ”Kiona, can you detect any sign of patrol s.h.i.+ps in this system, or defensive batteries on the planet?”

”Nothing of the kind, Captain,” Thayer replied.

The captain was intrigued. She wondered aloud in Fletcher's direction, ”Odd, don't you think? This close to both Romulan and Klingon s.p.a.ce, and the planet has no obvious defenses.”

”Just because they aren't obvious doesn't mean they don't exist,” Fletcher said.

”True,” Hernandez said. She looked to the communications officer. ”Sidra, can we hail them on a regular radio frequency?”

Ensign Valerian shook her head. ”I've been trying for a couple of minutes now. No response so far.” She looked up from her console and added with a note of seemingly misplaced optimism, ”It's possible there's no one down there.”

Thayer replied, ”Then why are all the scattering fields still active?”

”Good question, Lieutenant,” Hernandez said. ”And it begs another one: Can we find a way through them?”

El-Rashad checked his readings, tossed a few switches, and said, ”If we were on the surface, we could walk through. They block signals, but they aren't harmful.”

”Captain,” Thayer cut in. ”One of the scattering fields is contracting.” She used an override switch to change the image on the main viewer. ”A city near the equator seems to be reducing its field radius in response to our scans.”

The captain was on her feet. ”Current radius?”

”Still shrinking,” Thayer said. ”Thirty kilometers. Twenty.” She adjusted some settings and added, ”Holding at fifteen kilometers, sir.”

Fletcher flashed a crooked grin at Hernandez. ”Walking distance. If you ask me, that looks like an invitation.”

”Agreed,” Hernandez said. ”a.s.semble a landing party and fire up the transporter, Commander. We're going down there.”

Less than an hour after he had beamed down into the heart of a tropical rainforest along the planet's sunbaked equator, Major Foyle's camouflage fatigues were soaked with sweat.

His second-in-command, Lieutenant Yacavino, and his senior noncom, Sergeant Pembleton, who had beamed down with him, also had become drenched in their own perspiration. Like the major, they were victims of the hot, soupy air in the densely overgrown tropical forest. Privates Crichlow, Mazzetti, and Steinhauer had beamed down ten minutes behind them, after chief engineer Graylock had reset the Columbia's temperamental transporter, and their uniforms were beginning to cling to them, as well.

The six MACOs had deployed in pairs, with each of the decimated company's leaders escorted by a private. Pembleton was on point, along with Mazzetti. Foyle and Crichlow stayed several meters behind them, on their left flank, moving parallel with Yacavino and Steinhauer, who were on Pembleton's right flank. For this mission they had traded in their standard gray-ice camouflage for dark-green forest patterns.

Foyle stepped over tangled vines and thick fallen branches while gazing down the barrel of his phase rifle, which he braced against his shoulder. A bright, sawing tinnitus of insect noise enveloped him, and shafts of intense light slashed through the sultry afternoon mists drifting down from the jungle's canopy. Thorned plants tugged at his fatigues, and underfoot the ground gave way to mud.

Something snapped in the underbrush ahead of Pembleton, who raised his fist to halt the team. Then he opened his hand and lowered it, palm down. Foyle and the others kneeled slowly, all but disappearing into the thick, waist-high fronds and ferns. Crichlow kept his rifle steady with one hand; with the other, the gawky Englishman pulled his hand scanner from his equipment belt and thumbed it open to its ”on” position. A few quick inputs by Crichlow set the device for silent operation, and he began a slow sweep of the area around the landing party.