Enterprise By the Book Page 2

  “Wow, that could be a terraformed Mars,” Anderson said.

  “Too much water,” Mayweather said, pointing at the oceans that covered about a third of the planet.

  At that moment Captain Archer’s voice came over the communications speakers. “Ensign Hoshi, Ensign Mayweather, report to the bridge.”

  “We’ll start this game later,” Anderson said as the two headed for the mess hall door.

  “You can count on it,” Mayweather said. “After this much setup, I’ve got to see if we at least can get across the canal.”

  “Piece of cake,” Anderson said, laughing.

  Cutler said nothing as she picked up the painted bolts and cup. She knew what she had planned for the three of them crossing the canal. And there wasn’t going to be anything easy about it.

  TWO

  CAPTAIN JONATHAN ARCHER WAS STANDING BESIDE HIS captain’s chair, his arm resting on its back, when the sound of the lift caught his attention. It always caught his attention. He was still as excited as a boy about commanding his own starship. Even the word “starship” gave him a slight thrill.

  Ensigns Travis Mayweather and Hoshi Sato stepped off the lift. Hoshi’s cheeks were dusted a faint pink and she looked down as she moved toward her station. Mayweather had a telltale twinkle in his eye. He’d been teasing her about something, and Hoshi, still uncertain about many things on the ship, provided an easy target.

  Archer suppressed a smile as he turned back toward the screen. In experience, in attitude, they were the most different members of his crew. Yet they shared something the rest of the crew did: they were the absolute best at what they did.

  The image on the screen caught him and made him forget his two ensigns. The image of the red and blue and green planet floating there was a beautiful sight. Sometimes he found himself staring at all the new planets, the new space anomalies, with his mouth half open in wonder.

  Then he’d catch T’Pol staring at him, and realize he looked like the biggest rube. No wonder she had trouble taking him seriously. The thrill he enjoyed every time he stumbled on a new sight probably seemed like incompetence to her.

  He forced himself to take a deep breath and contain the excitement he was feeling. He glanced at the readings in the arm. Everything looked good. They had taken a high orbit over this planet and from what he could tell, there was a decently advanced civilization here.

  “I have confirmed a recent warp trail signature,” T’Pol said, glancing up at him from her science station. Her dark Vulcan eyes were as intense as always, her expression blank.

  A warp trail signature? Really? Finding other aliens was as thrilling to Archer as orbiting a new planet. Maybe more.

  “Can you track it?” Archer struggled to sound as dispassionate as T’Pol did. He’d never achieve that, but at least he’d keep the puppylike enthusiasm out of his voice.

  “I can,” T’Pol said. “It originated from high orbit near the second planet, moved a short distance away, and then terminated.”

  “A test flight,” Archer said, more to himself than anyone.

  “That would be a logical deduction,” T’Pol said.

  “There are a number of satellites and what you might call ‘space junk’ in low orbit,” Lieutenant Malcolm Reed said. “I see nothing threatening.”

  Archer turned and leaned on the railing separating him from Hoshi. The metal was cold. “Is anyone hailing us?”

  “No, sir. There are different radio bands, maybe civilian, maybe not.” She raised her head. Her gaze met his. As always, Archer was struck by the brilliance that radiated out of her dark eyes. “Their language is going to be a problem.”

  “Why’s that?” Archer asked.

  T’Pol also looked up, from her science station, to wait for Hoshi’s answer. The Vulcan’s movements were always compact, efficient, in a way that the rest of the crew’s weren’t. The fact that she raised her head indicated interest.

  Archer couldn’t imagine Earth’s best linguist thinking any language was going to be a problem. Hoshi could almost instantly get a grip on the basics of any tongue. It was the main reason he had desperately wanted her on board for this first trip.

  “Structure,” Hoshi said. Her head was tilted slightly. She was clearly listening to the aliens’ broadcasts as she talked. “I’ve never heard anything like it. In fact, I’ve never imagined anything like it. The structure of a sentence seems to mean more than the words. At least from what I can gather so far.”

  Her fingers flew over her board, keying in the computer diagnostic.

  “Keep working on it,” Archer said. He turned to T’Pol and then Reed. “Well?”

  “It appears we’ve run into a humanoid culture,” Reed said, examining the computer screen in front of his station. His fingers pressed buttons as he spoke. “From what I can gather, they’re about one hundred years or so behind us technologically.”

  “Because of a war?” Archer asked, remembering that when the Vulcans discovered Earth a hundred years before, humans were recovering from a very nasty war.

  “No,” Reed said.

  On the main screen the planet below them was in darkness, lights of the cities clear even from this height. Archer couldn’t believe their luck. Their mission was to go out and meet new races, and here, almost on their back porch, was a planet just making its first steps into space.

  “There is another race on this planet as well,” T’Pol said. “They inhabit the southern continent completely.”

  “What?” Archer said, keying in the scans of the southern continent for the main screen.

  It took only a moment before he realized T’Pol was right. Unlike the roads and cities that covered the rest of the planet, this continent seemed almost untouched. Very alien-looking villages dotted the edge of the shoreline all the way around the continent. Thousands and thousands of them, their village structures very different from anything on the rest of the planet. And nowhere near as advanced.

  “Are you sure these aren’t members of the same race who are just less advanced?” Archer asked. For a long time, humans developed at different rates because of their different cultures. Only recently, historically speaking, had human culture united technologically.

  “Yes, I am certain,” T’Pol said. Archer thought he caught a bit of a chill in her voice. He’d offended her by questioning her skill. He hadn’t been doing that, exactly. He’d just wanted clarification. But he wasn’t going to tell her that.

  “Captain,” Hoshi said, “I’m still not getting all of this language. But I’m pretty certain about a few things.”

  “Go ahead,” Archer said.

  “The race that inhabits most of this planet call themselves Fazi.” Hoshi paused for a moment, listened, and then shook her head. “They have an extremely structured and rigid society, from what I can tell, and are led by a council of sorts.”

  “It would be that council we would contact?” Archer asked.

  “I think so,” Hoshi said.

  It was clear to Archer she wasn’t one hundred percent sure yet.

  “I would recommend patience and study,” T’Pol said. “There is much to learn here.”

  “For the moment I agree,” Archer said, dropping into his captain’s chair. The leather sank comfortably beneath him, almost as if the chair had been designed to his own physical specs. He leaned forward and studied the planet below as the ship’s orbit brought them over the area of sunrise. As he watched, the lights of the alien city below were slowly overwhelmed by the daylight.

  Down there people were just waking up and starting their day. Maybe for them it would be a day that would be remembered for a very long time. The day when the Fazi learned there was a much bigger and vaster universe out beyond their solar system. And that they were not alone, just as humanity had learned when the Vulcans landed.

  When he took this mission, Archer had promised himself that if—and when—they made first contact, he would do it better than the Vulcans had done.

  He inte
nded to keep that promise now.

  THREE

  ELIZABETH CUTLER WIPED OFF HER TABLE IN THE MESS. She was pleasantly full—having opted for the first night of the homemade stew instead of the Vulcan broth she’d been experimenting with. Everyone said the stew was better the second night, but she still hadn’t recovered from her microbiology classes as an undergraduate. Any food that was more than a few hours old had a way of turning her stomach.

  She credited that to her imagination. It always forced her to see the microbes forming their little colonies inside what was going to be her meal. The imagined problems got worse when she thought about meat.

  Her bolts were resting beside the table, along with a thick towel. She was getting ready to start the game again, although part of her wished she wasn’t.

  The reddish blue planet floated outside the windows, filling the mess hall with slowly changing colors. Every time the Enterprise orbited over different sections of the planet, the colors changed. They had been in high orbit now for over twelve hours.

  She’d asked when she had started her duty shift earlier that day if she could start investigating the aliens’ biology. But the information they were getting from the planet was too sketchy. Besides, her work was extremely detailed and usually she had to have a sample before she could begin.

  She wanted to get down there now and get a sample, but she would have to wait, just like everyone else. Over dinner, Mayweather had confessed that he had the urge to steal a shuttle and head through the planet’s atmosphere. He wouldn’t do it, of course. None of them would. But she had had the same urge.

  So close and yet so far.

  Anderson hadn’t said much. He’d been spending the day studying the planet’s geography and cataloguing the differences between the new planet and Earth. But he was running into the same problems Cutler was. At some point, he’d need to go to the surface to get samples so that he could start a proper geological survey.

  But that point wasn’t even close yet.

  Anderson stood in front of the windows now, his hands clasped behind his back. The air in the mess was close and warm. The environmental systems sometimes couldn’t cope with the cooking steam and the increased number of bodies at mealtime. Fortunately, most everyone had finished and left.

  Cutler spread her towel over the table and contemplated the game. She’d have to work to make it as interesting as that planet teasing them out there.

  She knew there was little chance that Ensign Hoshi would be returning to the role-playing game while they were anywhere near the Fazi planet. From what Cutler had heard, the language of the Fazi had Hoshi pulling out her hair. Cutler couldn’t imagine the brilliant woman being upset about anything, but from all reports, Hoshi was getting more and more that way as this language frustrated her at every turn.

  Cutler could wait until this real-life drama was over, she supposed, but she didn’t want to. She needed to be distracted from her fantasies about the life on the planet below. So she had asked Crewman Alex Novakovich if he’d like to join their first adventure to Mars.

  She should have asked him in the first place, but she hadn’t thought of it. She avoided thinking about the away mission she had taken with Novakovich. The mission had shaken her to her core, sometimes making her doubt her own mind. If she closed her eyes, she could still see the hallucinations that had so angered her. They had seemed real, even if they were a pollen-induced vision.

  Fortunately, Captain Archer was forgiving, and T’Pol, who’d taken the brunt of Cutler’s paranoid ravings, said simply that encounters on strange new worlds took tacks that no one expected. That is why, she had said, looking at Archer, Vulcans always proceed with caution.

  Caution was not one of Captain Archer’s favorite words—and that was one reason Cutler liked serving under his command.

  But as bad as the mission had gone for Cutler, it had gone even worse for Novakovich. He was still recovering physically from his emergency beam-out in the middle of a sandstorm.

  Novakovich had materialized with plants and sticks and sand phased into his skin. The very thought of that experience made Cutler shudder. She’d been giving the transporter a wide berth from the beginning, but that berth was even wider now.

  Dr. Phlox had removed all of the larger items, and from what Cutler could tell, the sores were healing well, almost without scars. But, as Novakovich had told her, the sand was causing him the most problems. It had been phased into most of his exposed skin by the transporter, and the only thing Dr. Phlox had been able to do was say that the sand would take care of itself.

  “Skin has a way of healing itself,” Novakovich had told Culter when she’d expressed surprise at his appearance.

  The problem with the sand was that the skin was healing itself by forming pimples around the sand particles and expelling them as whiteheads. (Sand heads? She didn’t dare ask, even as a joke.) In all her years, Cutler had never seen such a bad case of acne as Novakovich had. She figured he could use an escape. And he had happily agreed to join the game.

  Mayweather came back from dumping his dinner dishes and sat down. “So when do we get this adventure under way?”

  For a moment, Cutler thought he was referring to the real planet and the adventure that awaited them. Then he grabbed his padd and sat in his spot at the table. He meant the Martian adventure, of course.

  Anderson left the window and walked back to the table. Novakovich was already seated, studying the weapons information that Anderson had given him during dinner.

  “We’ve got to get Novakovich here a character, first,” Cutler said.

  Anderson sat down. “I hope yours is less mediocre than mine,” he said to Novakovich.

  “How come Alex can’t use Hoshi’s character?” Mayweather asked.

  “She might want to rejoin the game at some point,” Cutler said. “Besides, it’s RPG protocol to roll your own characters.”

  Mayweather sighed. He clearly wanted to start doing something—inside the adventure game or outside on the planet.

  “So,” Cutler said to Novakovich, “what’s your character’s name?”

  “Rust,” Novakovich said.

  “Short for Rusty?” Anderson asked.

  “Nope,” Novakovich said. “Just Rust. Used to have a dog by that name.”

  “You might not want an emotional attachment to your character,” Cutler said as she handed him the bolts.

  “Why not?” Novakovich asked.

  “Sometimes characters don’t survive adventures.”

  “I was wondering why we didn’t roll a resurrection number,” Mayweather said. He was clearly joking.

  “In some games you do roll for a number of lives or resurrections,” Cutler said. “But those are fantasy role-playing games.”

  “Yeah,” Anderson said, grinning, “and our game is so clearly based in reality.”

  Cutler smiled. “Let’s see who Rust is.”

  Novakovich dumped the bolts on the table. This time the clatter was muffled by the towel. Cutler was pleased. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to handle the sound of metal bolts rolling on a hard tabletop, roll after roll.

  Novakovich rolled six red bolts for strength, and nine for intelligence. His charisma came out a dismal three, his dexterity a nine, and his luck a whopping two.

  “I don’t know who has the worse character, me or you,” Anderson said. “Mine is stunningly mediocre, but yours is either bad or good at what he has.”

  “I think he’s typical,” Mayweather said. “A smart guy who can’t get a girl to save his life.”

  “Some women like smart men,” Cutler said, glancing at Anderson, then looking away. But not before Mayweather caught the look.

  “I’m crushed,” he said softly, so that only she could hear.

  “You’re a smart guy,” Novakovich said, oblivious of the undertones.

  “Oh?” Mayweather said, turning his teasing tone on Novakovich. “Are you saying I can’t get a girl either?”

  Novakovich
shook his head. “Are we ready to play yet or not?”

  “Ready,” Cutler said. She decided to refresh them all, since she couldn’t remember what she’d told Novakovich. “Here’s what you are facing. You have to get a Universal Translator part from a building in the center of the old ruined city. You have landed on the edge of a Martian canal. There are dangerous creatures in the canal, a small boat tied to the shore, or an old bridge.”

  “Are we working together on this mission?” Novakovich asked.

  Cutler shrugged. “Your choice.”

  She had figured they would, but it wouldn’t matter. They could split up if they wanted to. She had asked them to bring padds so they could keep track of where they’d been. If they decided to split up, she wouldn’t let them look at each other’s padds even though they’d heard the adventure. She would have to modify things slightly if they took a path someone else had walked first.

  “I’d like a companion or two,” Mayweather said.

  “Me, too,” Anderson said.

  “Who am I to argue?” Novakovich said.

  Since they reacted the way the game required, Cutler said nothing. If the other two had disagreed with Mayweather, though, she would have pointed out that he had the highest charisma score now that Hoshi was gone and he would be their leader.

  “I vote for the bridge,” Anderson said.

  “I think I’m with him,” Novakovich said.

  Mayweather just shrugged, sitting back and smiling. “Why not? I’ll go along for the meantime.”

  “So now we’re trudging to the bridge over the sand,” Mayweather said. “Right?”

  “You’ve already reached the bridge,” Cutler said. She hadn’t thought of putting any problems right outside the landing area of the ship. She should have, though. She remembered playing on computer. The best games started with a crisis right up front.

  “So what’s this bridge like?” Anderson asked.

  Cutler glanced at her notes to make sure she was remembering all the details she had worked up right. “The first part of the bridge looks sturdy. But once you get a third of the way across you see a large hole. The hole is too big to jump and the bridge is crumbling away under you.”