Strange New Worlds IX Page 8

  Data inclined his head. “Indeed? I would like to discuss that more with you, once we have both recuperated.”

  Sharon nodded. “I’d like that. Sir.” She rested her head back on the wall. There was so much she still had to learn—from Data, from Randishira, from all of Starfleet.

  Terra Tonight

  Scott Pearson

  Cadet Ella Rose, in the engine room of the Hood on a training cruise, kept her eyes on her display as she said, “Chief, you think we might pass by the Frisco yards on the way back to spacedock? The new Sovereign-class Enterprise is coming along well, and you know I requested a posting on her…” She trailed off as she glanced toward Chief Engineer Chandra at the port system display just as he staggered backward, then doubled over as if punched in the stomach.

  “Check the synch—” The order was cut off as a waviness surrounded the chief like heat shimmering in the air. He looked like he was yelling more orders, but no sound reached Rose. She headed toward him but hesitated as Chandra’s legs left the deck, his whole body turning in the air with his waist the axis of rotation. He hovered there, slowly tumbling in place, his body appearing to ripple and warp as if seen through a billowing sheet of translucent plastic.

  “Engineering, this is Captain DeSoto. All our boards just lit up like fireworks. What’s going on down there?”

  Rose reached for her combadge. Before she could tap the channel open, she found herself stumbling across the deck then falling to starboard. She toppled downward, toward the wall, which suddenly seemed below her. She landed facedown, banging her elbows and accidentally biting her lip. Scrambling up into a sitting position—still on the wall—she saw other cadets and regular engineering crew trying to adapt to the chaos in the engine room.

  The port system display shattered, the shards flying and falling in random directions. Crew members fell, stumbled, or floated in various directions. A crease appeared in the ceiling, the walls seemed to bend, and although Rose remained on the wall, the blood from her lip dripped to the ceiling. She wiped at her mouth with a sleeve, and tapped her combadge.

  “Cadet Rose to the bridge.” She paused. “Captain DeSoto?”

  There was no answer.

  “This is a Federation News Service breaking story. All contact has been lost with the Federation transport ship Jenolen, en route to Norpin Five, a popular retirement colony. Starfleet considers the ship, which is now fifty hours overdue, missing. A search-and-rescue operation is under way. Although a crew and passenger manifest has not yet been released, a ship of this class would usually have a crew complement of about three dozen and could carry up to two hundred passengers. The FNS has confirmed with anonymous sources within Starfleet that Captain Montgomery Scott, retired, was among those passengers. Captain Scott is well known for his fifty-two-year-long Starfleet career, much of it aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise under the command of Captain James T. Kirk.

  “Just last year (Sol calendar) Captains Kirk and Scott were instrumental in assisting Captain John Harriman of the Enterprise -B in rescuing forty-seven El-Aurian refugees from a dangerous spatial phenomenon informally known as the Nexus. Captain Kirk was lost during that rescue and presumed dead. Now it appears that Captain Scott has joined his former commander on the list of Starfleet officers who have disappeared in space…. Truly, for them, the final frontier.

  “The FNS will continue to update this story as information becomes available. In the meantime, on behalf of all of us at the FNS, allow me to say our thoughts are with the family and friends of the crew and passengers of the U.S.S. Jenolen. This is Brad Foster reporting for the Federation News Service.”

  Marta Jensen faced the holocamera in front of her sleek wooden desk. The large monitor behind her faded from Foster to a stock image of the Jenolen. “That was the lead story seventy-seven years ago, almost to the day. Losing a ship is not as uncommon as any of us would hope, but it always feels like a new and terrible thing when it does happen.” The image behind her dissolved from the Jenolen to Voyager. “It is now two weeks since the FNS learned through friends and family of the crew that the U.S.S. Voyager is missing with all hands. So far, no new information has come to light, and the fate of Voyager remains unknown. All we can do is hope that she will soon reappear, the victim of only a small technical failure. But that story remains to be written.

  “Tonight, however, we will speak with someone who, by his very presence, will give hope to all those who are waiting for someone on Voyager, because sometimes the lost are found. Sitting with me is the subject of that seventy-seven-year-old story we just replayed, someone who takes the cliché out of the phrase ‘living legend.’” Jensen turned to her left as Voyager was replaced with an Enterprise triptych—the NCC-1701 as Kirk first commanded her, the refitted Enterprise, and finally the 1701-A. “Captain Montgomery Scott, welcome to Terra Tonight.”

  The director changed the feed to the two-shot holocamera, displaying Jensen and Scott side by side.

  “Och, enough with that ‘legend’ talk, lass. To paraphrase an old friend o’ mine, I’m an engineer, not a statue. And please, call me Scotty.”

  “Fair enough. But you can’t deny that you’ve done some amazing things, not the least of which is reappearing after being missing for seventy-five years, and apparently without aging a day in all that time.”

  A cloud seemed to cross Scott’s face as the director cut to a close shot, but Scott quickly recovered for the cameras. “Well now, you know I canna talk about that in detail, since certain aspects of it are still classified. But I can say that I was the only survivor of the Jenolen, meaning a lot of good people died, including a fine young engineer and friend, Ensign Matt Franklin. So you’ll understand if it’s not a celebration for me.”

  Jensen nodded sympathetically. “Of course.” She leaned back in her chair. “Let’s talk about Starfleet. You had retired before your disappearance. What made you decide to go back on active duty?”

  “Oh, there were a lot of things. Mostly it was when Admiral Nechayev reinstated me as a consultant during a recent incident. In other words, she drafted me.”

  Jensen smiled for a moment, then, with the smoothness that all reporters seem to have, looked serious again. “You refer to the loss of the Enterprise-D.”

  “Yes, but—”

  Marta held up a hand. “I know, it’s classified.” She leaned forward again, folding her hands together. “Let’s go back to being ‘drafted,’ as you call it. You didn’t rejoin on your own?”

  “Not at first, no. After I was rescued, I had some rough spots. Many of my friends and family were gone. I couldn’t throw myself back into my work—I was seventy-five years behind on my technical manuals and without a ship to serve on. The Enterprise-D was a wee bit overwhelming. I headed out in a shuttle with no direction to go. Norpin Five no longer sounded interesting to me, but nothing else did either. I was—”

  Scott’s combadge chirped for attention, surprising both him and Jensen; Scott had cleared this appearance with Starfleet and was supposed to be unavailable for the duration of the interview.

  With a shrug at Jensen, Scott said, “Sorry, I have to respond to this.”

  As he got up from the chair and stepped away from the desk, Jensen turned toward the main holocamera and said, “And so you see, even in the studio you never know what’s going to happen during a live holocast. Apparently, there is an unfolding emergency of some sort that has required the input of Captain Scott. We will keep you updated as we learn more…”

  A few steps away and with his back to Jensen, in the relative dark outside the range of the cameras, Scott tapped his combadge. “Scott here.”

  “This is Nechayev. We’ve got an emergency on the Hood. I need you to get back to that desk immediately.”

  “The Hood? Isn’t she on a cadet cruise? And what’s that got to do with—”

  “Captain, the Hood is suffering multiple system malfunctions, and you helped design the Excelsior class.”

  “That was many refits a
go, Admiral, and the original design team didn’t listen much to my input.”

  Nechayev continued, ignoring Scott’s comment. “The Hood’s standard communications are down, but for some reason civilian frequencies are still getting through, so the quickest way for you to contact her is from that desk. We’ve got a signal from her coming through a patchwork of civilian satellites and relays. We’ll put that through to the studio.”

  “Aye, Admiral.” Scott shook his head. All the pressure was on him now, hanging on the thread of this tenuous connection to the ship. He hurried back to the desk.

  Jensen was still looking into the holocamera. “Captain Scott’s first standout engineering victory came early in his career, while he served as advisor to the Denevan asteroid-mining operation. During a cargo run, the freighter Scott was on—”

  “Sorry, lass,” Scott said as he settled back into the guest chair. “I’m commandeering this show.”

  Jensen gave him a confused smile. “That’s quite an entrance, Captain, but I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “You’ll find out soon. And call me Scotty.” Scott faced the monitor behind Jensen’s desk.

  There was a loud burst of static over the audio system as the Enterprise disappeared from the monitor and was replaced by the snow of interference. A voice, cracking with nerves, said, “ Hood to Captain Scott. Hood to Captain Scott.”

  Jensen raised her eyebrows as Scott held up a finger to indicate she should just wait and see what happened. The snow faded and resolved into an image of a young woman in a cadet uniform, her lower lip swollen and bloodied. There were drops of blood along the side of her face as if she’d been swinging around upside down while the blood ran from her mouth. Some of her long brown hair had slipped out of the ponytail she wore, and hung over her right eye. Behind her were glimpses of an engine room in a state of pandemonium.

  “This is Captain Montgomery Scott. Who is this?”

  “Cadet Ella Rose, sir.”

  “Where is the chief engineer?”

  Rose moved to her left, out of view. “That’s Chief Chandra.”

  A couple meters behind her, a person curled into a ball floated about a meter and a half off the deck, rotating randomly like a shuttle in free fall without stabilizers. Further in the background were more crew, some floating, some lying on the deck, walls, or ceiling. Most looked unconscious, but some clearly struggled against higher than normal gravity. Small pieces of debris were also scattered about, floating, falling, lying on various surfaces. Smoke and sparks guttered from conduits and consoles, and the lighting flickered on and off.

  Rose moved back into frame as she tucked the errant hair behind her ear. “For some reason, I’m the only one still able to move here in engineering, maybe on the whole ship. Communications—” A burst of sound interrupted the cadet, the low groan of bending metal. Rose looked over her left shoulder as an access panel bent and popped off the starboard wall, sailing across the room. After the panel froze in midair, she looked back. “When I couldn’t reach anyone else on the ship, I was finally able to get through to Starfleet.”

  “Well done, lass. Clever to think of using civilian channels.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Call me Scotty.”

  Rose paused, looking unsure. “Aye, sir.”

  Scott rolled his eyes. “All right, listen up, lass. You’re going to have to be the chief for now. I’ll talk you through it. Can you do that?”

  “Aye, sir.” There was another sound, a tinkling that was followed by a building, loud burst. Rose looked off frame over her right shoulder. “Well, the port system display just went back together.”

  Scott and Jensen exchanged looks. “Say again?” Scott said.

  “The display shatters, then it goes back together like a vid played in reverse.”

  Scott nodded. “So you’re having localized temporal distortions in addition to trouble with your grav systems and, judging by what else I’m seeing, some structural integrity field issues.”

  “Aye, sir. I’m also worried about the inertial dampers. They’ve held so far during warp-bubble fluctuations, but I don’t dare try to bring the ship to a stop.”

  “Good thinking—if the dampers failed as the ship stopped, everything not nailed down would crash toward the bow at near light speed. What’s your heading?”

  Rose glanced down at a display. “We were on course for Earth Spacedock when all of this started. Our speed has been fluctuating, but averaging warp two. We’ve just crossed the termination shock.”

  “What’s that?” Jensen said.

  Scott turned toward her. “It’s where the solar wind starts slowing down against the interstellar medium, about a hundred AUs from the sun. That means the Hood will blast into the solar system at warp two in about two hours.”

  “Aimed right at Earth?”

  “No, her course would have been for system insertion near a standard approach lane. If we can’t stop her, odds are she’ll just whistle right through. It’s never good to warp through a planetary system, however.” He turned back to Rose. “But that’s not going to happen. We’re going to take care of this wee problem, aren’t we, lass?”

  “I’m ready to try, sir.”

  “Well, then, let’s get to it. It seems to me like you’ve got a multifield dissonance effect. Do you concur?”

  Rose narrowed her eyes. “A what?”

  Scott shook his head. “Lass, what year are you?”

  “Fourth.”

  “You’re about to graduate? What have they been teaching you for four years?”

  “Well, you see, sir…” Rose started, but Scott wasn’t listening.

  Scott glanced at Jensen. “Kids today, they learn about all the parts, but they don’t understand how to put it all together.” He faced toward Rose again. “The warp field, structural integrity field, inertial dampers, and artificial gravity generators all have to be synchronized properly so that they don’t interfere with each other. If they go out of synch you get all sorts of feedback loops and the whole thing goes wonky.”

  Rose smiled and nodded her head. “Oh, I understand that, sir. You mean to say we have cascading asynchronous field interference.”

  Scott frowned. “Everything has more syllables since I came back.” He leaned forward in his chair. “Now, I’m going to need you to go back to the matter-antimatter reaction chamber. Can you get there?”

  “I think so.” Rose turned to her left and disappeared from view. Scott and Jensen could now see most of engineering, and saw for themselves when the port system display panel shattered again and then reversed itself. Rose reappeared, the back of her head and shoulders coming into view from the right side of the monitor as she walked along the starboard wall. Her long ponytail jumped and waved in the unstable gravity. As she made her way slowly toward the reaction chamber, Jensen turned away from the monitor and toward the holocameras.

  “If you’ve just joined us, we are live with Captain Montgomery Scott, who is communicating with Cadet Ella Rose in the engineering room of the U.S.S. Hood.” Behind her Rose jumped from the wall, sailing through an area of zero g. “Scott is attempting to assist the cadet in—”

  “Watch out!” Scott said as Rose suddenly tumbled toward the ceiling before somersaulting back toward the deck. Jensen turned back to the monitor as the cadet landed on her feet, looking at least as surprised as Jensen did.

  “Nice landing,” said Scott. “A bit of a gymnast, are you?”

  “No, sir,” Rose called back across the engine room. “Not since climbing the monkey bars when I was a kid.” She shook her head, trying to restore her sense of balance.

  “Well, whatever lands the caber straight, lass. Now then, put your hand on the chamber. Feel around a bit. Does it feel hot?”

  Rose turned toward the chamber and did as she was told. After a few seconds she yanked her hand back, and looked back toward Scott. “Yes, sir, it does. About fifteen centimeters above the dilithium chamber hatch.”

 
; “Och, the Excelsior class always were a bucket of bolts, refits or no.” Scott waved an arm in disgust. “All right then. You need to go to the port tool stow beneath the tractor beam auxiliary control panel.”

  “Aye, aye.” Rose quickly made her way across the room; this time there were no gravitational anomalies to slow her down. Kneeling, she popped the access panel open. “What do I need?”

  “A big spanner.”

  “A coil spanner?” Rose held the tool up for Scott to see.

  “Sure, that would work, if it’s at least two kilos. Now go back to that hot spot and give it a mighty whack with that spanner.”

  Jensen raised her eyebrows. Rose just looked toward them, her expression difficult to discern from across the room. Scott frowned. “What are you waiting for?”

  “Well…it seems ill advised.”

  “Listen to me, cadet. You’ve got to know your ship. And I’m not talking about memorizing technobabble and running diagnostics, I’m talking about really feeling it, just as surely as you feel your own body when it’s sick. These aren’t only engines, they’re your bairns, and sometimes you might have to spank them. Now go give that spot a whack!”

  Rose shrugged and stood up. Wary of anomalies in the artificial gravity, she made her way across the room holding the spanner close to her chest. When she reached the chamber she hefted the spanner like a baseball bat, then hesitated again.

  “I don’t see any whacking!” Scott yelled.

  With a tilt of her head, Rose swung the spanner at the hot spot. The spanner bounced off the chamber with a resounding echo of metal on metal and flew out of her hands. The noise echoed in the confines of the engine room, but instead of fading away it continued to reverberate. If anything, it got louder.

  “What’s happening?” Rose said, speaking up over the continued ringing of the echo. To her right, the spanner, caught in an anomaly, fell toward the ceiling.