Go to:
Captain Thorpe had read the reports filed from the away teams, and he was going to sleep on his decision what to do next. Matsubara and the others had reported on their mission into Adamsburg and the mining complex. Guerrero had set up a comm link between the computers in the mining control centre and the Athena so that the images from the mine face could be studied in more detail. They had used the best computer imaging analysis systems and the most advanced enhancement algorithms, but all they were looking at was rock, both the igneous base rock and the palladium ores that ran through it. They saw nothing else. Go to:
Copyright December 2002 by White Tornado Publishing. "Star Trek" is a registered trademark of Paramount Pictures. No copyright infringement intended by this non-profit, hobby site. Characters and situations unique to this story are the property of White Tornado Publishing. All characters and situations in this work are fictional, and any resemblance to real individuals or situations is strictly unintentional. Do not publish any contet from this site to any other site without permission of the site creator.
Chapter 3
Next Chapter, Previous Chapter, or Novel Home Page
or jump to a chapter:
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20 and Chapter 21.
Shipboard morning came soon enough. In Adamsburg and vicinity, it was approaching midafternoon. Thorpe went through the usual routines, checking in with the third-shift duty officer for a report, and hearing that nothing unusual had happened. He asked if there had been any contact with the Odonan ship-they did not even know which ship was coming-but there had been none. He headed to the Acropolis for breakfast, quite aware that the crew was waiting for an answer from him on what the next step was. He still had not fully decided.
Curiously, when he arrived in the Acropolis, the senior officers' table was deserted except for one person, Matsubara. Taking his toast and scrambled eggs, with a dinner roll and orange juice on the side, Thorpe approached the table and sat down on the opposite side from his long-time friend. "Good morning," he said, sounding more formal than intended.
"Good morning, sir," Matsubara replied. He probably was on duty already, she thought.
"Did you manage to get some sleep?"
"A little. One thing I've learned to hate is this tossing and turning that comes when something like this comes up. You want to solve it. You want to work at it and complete it to the exclusion of all else. What about you?"
"I was up and down all night, trying to think of the right thing to do."
"We really don't have too many choices," Matsubara said after a pause. "We could wait for the Odonans to arrive, and then what if they say, 'We really don't know what we did wrong'?"
"I thought about that. I'm just thinking that I might have to send an away team into the mine. It's a risk. Sure, there's the latent risk on virtually every away team that goes out, but this time, we know something can go bad if there's any kind of misstep."
"It's a risk we can take. Remember, all of those people are there, somewhere, so it's not as if we're going to immediately die."
"I know." Thorpe leaned across the table slightly, and in a slightly hushed voice, asked, "Damiko, I need to know... do you have any problems with being on this away team?"
Matsubara had thought that the captain might not want to send her on this most critical of the away teams, after she had been on the first two. She was even worried that he might come up with the excuse that she had led two teams already, admittedly the less-risky of the missions, and so it was time to let someone else take charge. The real reason was nothing like that, she was sure. Now, she realized that the last thing she wanted to hear was the captain telling her that somebody else was going. "No, I have no problem leading this away team." After a pause, she added, "Do you?" Both knew exactly what she meant by that comment.
"No," Thorpe finally said. It almost sounded like the hardest word that he had to say.
"You know," Matsubara started, after she watched the captain eat some of the scrambled eggs. "We've always managed to separate our personal lives from our duties, and our responsibilities. I've heard that it is improper for people who are not at the same level in the chain of command to have relationships."
"That's true. It makes the lot of the captain a lonely one. Yet, ours is a different situation."
"I know, but it's always best to keep them separate. When on duty, I'm a member of the crew, just a member of the crew."
"It's how I've always done it."
"I know, but it's not easy sometimes, is it?"
After a few seconds, Thorpe admitted, "No, it's not."
Matsubara grinned, saying, "I'm not terribly worried. I think we'll be alright. This alien device was not planted here to be an indiscriminate, out-of-control killing-or transporting-machine. It must have some kind of purpose. If we can find this purpose, then we're halfway to solving the problem."
"But first we must find the artifact.'
"Yes."
Matsubara knew even before going into the Acropolis that she was getting the assignment to go into the mine. She was not sure if she wanted to go, but knew that being the chief science officer, she would be the best one to evaluate the situation on-site. But the captain's orders had been very specific. Somebody had done something to activate the alien device, so they were going in to look and not touch. They were simply looking for something unusual and out of place, especially in the location of the rich vein of palladium. Matsubara and those with her were equipped with the Odonan forcefield belts, as Thorpe thought that if those were on and the away team tripped the effect, they might not be transported if the system could not "lock" onto them or perhaps might not recognize them as lifeforms. Any precaution was welcome, Matsubara thought. With her on the away team were Guerrero, and Ensign Nuice Ninyear, another science officer whose specialty was the interactions of energy and other physical effects on geology and related sciences.
The three rematerialized at the main landing in the first level of the mine, and were joined there by two other away teams, who would be exploring other areas in the mine. Facing the assembled officers, Matsubara started, "Our mission here is primarily observation. We have all been briefed on the ship on the layout of this mine, and what to look for. Because we don't know what tripped the alien device, we can't risk using tricorders set for active scanning. We're here to primarily look for anything unusual, anything that would simply not look right with the rocks. Scan passively, and observe, but be extremely cautious around anything unusual or alien-looking. Any questions?" Matsubara looked over the gathered faces, and to an individual they did look a little grim and just a little nervous. One wrong step could send them... somewhere, and there was no turning back. "Very well, move out. You have your assignments."
The group broke up. The mine had six areas where work had been going on, but only two of the faces had been active at the time of the incident. Matsubara had the most recent face, labelled six, which was where the miners had found the unusual rock and had requested the geologist. Matsubara, with Guerrero and Ninyear alongside, got into one of the lifts, and punched the button to take them down to the fifth level. Matsubara looked at the other two, to see if they felt the same nervousness and concern she could not help but feel. It was hard to read Guerrero naturally. He was among the taller of the officers, with a stocky build and bushy black hair that was collar-length. He had a light, scruffy beard that was just on the edge of regulation. He seemed relaxed and felt almost casual over all of this. On the other side was Ninyear, who was a contrast to Guerrero, in that she was shorter and more slight of build, with a rather pale skin and pale hair, almost as if she really had spent virtually all of her time indoors, in front of computer screens and old-fashioned books. She was, however, good at what she had been asked to do. Like Guerrero, she seemed relaxed, although she was focusing straight ahead. Just two minutes after it began, the lift came to a stop, and the door opened. Matsubara was not totally surprised to see that the lights were still on, and the air-circulating system still operating, since they had turned the systems on in the control centre. Nevertheless, it seemed in a way eerie that everything was running but nobody else was around.
Ninyear remarked as she looked around, "Not exactly the stereotypical mine that you hear about in stories and so on." The three walked into the tunnel.
"Mining technology has changed over the years," Guerrero replied. "It's more highly automated nowadays."
The group moved down the corridor to a pair of heavy metal doors, which were normally closed, but now were open. They passed through them and into a broad corridor. As the tunnels had been cut, the walls and ceilings had been sealed with a strong duroplast compound to contain the rock and prevent any collapses and cave-ins. An air processing system had also been installed, with the environmental system providing clean air and removing any contaminants in the air. As a result, once the system had been turned back on, the air was fresh and cool. The lighting was bright, and the corridor wide, and about the only thing that indicated that this was no mere corridor was the fact a set of tracks ran down the middle of the corridor. Spaced every hundred or so metres were more of the steel containment doors, but they were all open. At more random points along their way were side corridors, which led into the active mining areas. After a walk of almost ten minutes, the group finally came to the end of the tunnel. Self-propelled ore cars sat on the tracks, waiting for the gravity-crane installation above them to drop in the ore and send it on to the processing areas. Here, the duroplast ended, and the mining equipment started to fill the space. The cutting lasers were silent, as were the sonic disruptors which would break up the ore, and the tractor scoops were silent as well. The lighting even here was as bright as normally seen in a starship corridor, as the lights mounted on the ceiling and on the various pieces of equipment were all on. Everything here was powered through conduits included with the rails, and with the power now coming from a fusion reactor outside of Adamsburg, everything was still working.
Now Matsubara started to feel a little more nervous than she had earlier. She was aware of the shallower, more intensive breathing, and a greater sense of awareness. This was where it happened. This was not the moment to be unaware of the surroundings or to take risks. All indications were that something that the inhabitants of Adamsburg did right here sent all of those people to wherever it was that they were sent. She had no idea what it might have been. The others shared her concerns. She saw that Guerrero was checking the power supply and the operational status of his forcefield belt, while Ninyear held out her tricorder and swept it around, trying to passively detect any kind of residual energy readings.
Matsubara finally said, "Anything?" She found herself speaking softly, as if it was the volume of their voices could set off the incident.
"Nothing, nothing out of the ordinary at all."
"No residual transporter energy effects?"
"None that I can tell using the tricorder in passive mode only," Ninyear replied. She did not even begin to suggest that they should use the tricorders in a more active mode. "Then again, it has been too long since the event to leave any obvious trace. Given the widespread nature of the event, it should've left traces on the surface if it left traces here. We saw nothing on the surface, so I'm not surprised to see nothing here."
Matsubara looked ahead. The actual mine face was a series of cuts and excavated holes in the dark rock, and the lights did not fully illuminate the irregular surface. She switched on her wrist-mounted lights to probe into the darkness, towards the deepest cuttings, which was where the miners apparently had been when working the event happened. She had to step gingerly over dropped equipment, such as power cables and air hoses and the rest, and loose and jagged rocks that had dropped. The floor was also rather irregular and rough where the miners had just started to cut into the rock.
"Commander," Guerrero said sharply, his voice much louder in the quiet environs. "You should see this."
The geologist was doing much the same as Matsubara, but he was examining the rock where the main lasers had started to cut in. The laser emitter was still positioned to fire into the hole. The lasers would cut around a large section of the wall, which would then be broken up and removed to the processing centre. The commander was nearby, so she moved over to his side and crouched down in order to see what he was seeing. Ninyear quickly joined them. Together, they looked at what the man had found. The miners had sunk a hole into the wall, to a depth of about twenty centimetres. The laser drill bit had came to a stop against some rock, but it looked to be rock polished so smoothly that it was like they had hit into a wall their drilling could not break through.
"I'd certainly say that would classify as something out of the ordinary," Guerrero remarked. He then reached out and touched that flat, smooth surface, despite the fact that the other two suddenly became tense and were prepared for the worst. Nothing happened, though. "It looks like rock. It looks like the strata carry right on through this, but that doesn't feel like rock."
"What does it feel like?" Matsubara asked.
"I don't know. It feels, cold, but not in the sense that rock feels cold. I can hold my hand here forever, and the warmth of my hand doesn't seem to spread into the immediate rock."
Matsubara found that explanation a little difficult to understand, but had to trust the opinion of a geologist. If he said the rock he was touching did not feel like a rock, that was good enough for her. Ninyear squatted down between the two, in a small space that was getting rapidly crowded, and looked at the odd formation. She reached into the gap, and touched it, and then she rubbed it. "You're right, Ray," she finally said. "That's not rock. It feels more like energy, more like a forcefield, and one that is large enough to draw off and distribute heat."
Matsubara asked, "The cloaking shield surrounding the alien artifact?"
"Possibly," the woman replied.
"Then why couldn't we detect it from orbit?"
"It might be designed to mimic the energy readings from the rock itself, and thus mask its existence. It's almost like a holographic forcefield in the sense that to sensors, it is supposed to look like a continuation of the rock, so that nobody would suspect that it was here. If we scan this with our tricorder, we'd likely get a reading that it is rock. It only reveals itself as not being rock when we do something that the builders likely never thought would be done, like physically touching it."
"Which of course begs the question on why some alien race would go through the bother to hide it like this."
"Of course," Ninyear started, "we could confirm what this is more quickly if we could scan it."
"That's not advisable right now."
"At some point, we're going to have to do it."
Guerrero stepped in, saying, "I'd like to take some samples of the rocks that are abutting against it, since they might carry a distinctive impression of the energy that the forcefield is projecting. If we can get the patterns, it might be able to map the extent of this object from orbit."
"That could trip the alien device," Matsubara cautioned.
"No, I don't think so." He looked behind him. "Unless other flat areas have been opened up on this mine face-and I've seen none-then this is the only one. Note that this tip of the mining equipment is aimed at this point. They were actively digging around this rock when the event occurred, and could've fired the high-powered lasers right on this."
"I'm still worried."
"I'm not going to attempt to get a sample from the device itself, but from the surrounding rock."
Finally, and feeling that this was against her better judgement, Matsubara said, "Okay, go ahead. But be cautious."
"That is my intention."
Guerrero had with him a specimen kit. He opened it up, and removed the covers from several small containers. He decided to forgo any powered device, and instead removed a small pick. He carefully placed that into the rock about a centimetre from the smooth surface, and began tapping. Matsubara found herself labouring to breathe, mostly because she felt the kind of tension usually seen when someone was attempting to defuse a bomb that could explode at any second. "Careful," the science officer said. She, along with Ninyear, was providing light for the geologist.
"As always." Finally, Guerrero dislodged a piece of rock about the size of the tip of his baby finger. He used the small pick to guide it into the sample container. "Got one," he said, letting out a breath. The others felt a little easier too. One sample, of course, was not enough, so the geologist turned to the other side of the small opening and began to pick out a piece of rock. As he did, some cracks appeared.
"Look at the fracturing," he said.
Ninyear could see that, saying, "It looks like the effect of long-term exposure to this energy field."
"That could help us."
"It could."
Guerrero managed to pick out another piece of rock form the face and dropped it into the sample container. "One more," he said. "I need three."
"Just be careful," Matsubara implored.
"I don't think that getting little samples like this caused the incident."
"Then what did?"
"It's possible that they attempted to get a sample directly from the flat area. I can't see anything else doing it."
"But just be careful," Matsubara repeated.
Guerrero said nothing. This would just take a few seconds, he thought. He tapped the small pick into the bottom of the opening that led to the mysterious flat section and started to gouge out some more of the rock. Again, the rock started to fracture. "This is most curious," he said softly, as if a loud voice would trip the effect. "This fracturing seems to cross the lines of the rock, almost as if it was... created."
"Then this rock could be part of the artifact too?" Matsubara asked.
Ninyear replied, "It's possible that as power diminished-however it generates power-the actual extent of the device might have shrunk slightly. The rock might have been modified to conduct the energy and the effect that the device generates."
"Then doing this?"
"I don't think it's a danger."
"But it could've been."
"Enough," Guerrero said, sounding as if he was in charge, but he did get the two women to stop throwing words at each other. The pebble he was trying to extract was not coming willingly, so he had to dig a little harder. The rock, without warning, gave way, and the back end of the small pick scratched against the flat surface.
Before anybody could react to that, they felt a strange tingling sensation that seemed to start at the core of their bodies and rapidly spread outwards. "Oh no!" Matsubara shouted. She reached for her commbadge...
But her hand never got there in time.
On the bridge of the Athena, the captain and first officer were monitoring the situation on the surface. T'Kor was at one of the rear mission ops console, conducting careful scans, both passive and active, for anything unusual, while the three away teams in the mine conducted their searches. She also monitored two additional away teams on the surface as they examined the buildings and facilities related to the mines. They were looking for items that might have been recovered which were related to what had happened. It was possible that the locals had not been aware of exactly what it was that they had. Afterall, that call to the geologist had gone out, but they had seen no evidence outside of the mine on why. In all sixteen people were on the surface, with the most senior officer among them being Matsubara. She led the mission on the surface because this was primarily a science operation.
Thorpe had just turned away from talking to Lieutenant Connie Lee, who was working on the surface, looking over documents in the mining building, when he heard the alarm sound from the tactical console. Everybody on the bridge turned towards the console, as Vorwoorts quickly called up the information. "An energy surge, sir! It's Adamsburg."
Almost instinctively, Thorpe shouted out, "Can you get a transporter lock on-"
"The energy event is gone," Vorwoorts reported.
"The away teams?"
The instruments told her one thing, but she repeated the scans just to make sure. "The away teams are not present within the affected area."
The silence fell on the bridge. Thorpe turned to look at the viewscreen. The imaging sensors had been set to remain focused on Adamsburg. From space, nothing unusual was visible. Vorwoorts conducted another scan, and added, "All life within the affected area has been... eliminated."
"Or removed," Thorpe corrected.
"Yes, perhaps that's the case."
Thorpe tried to remain composed. "Were the sensors operating when the event occurred?"
"Yes," Johnson said, from the mission ops console, where she was running additional science and sensor functions. "It'll take a few minutes to analyze the data and see if it was a destructive energy surge or a transporter-type surge."
The captain looked at the viewscreen. He knew that sixteen people, all officers from his ship, had been within the affected areas of Adamsburg, and were now gone. However, he fixed his attention on just one person, Matsubara. It was the most natural thing to do since of the sixteen people, he knew Matsubara the most on a personal level. In fact, he knew few people more intensively than he knew his science officer. Now, she had gone-under the best-case scenario-somewhere and given the knowledge that they had, meagre as it was, the odds were not good that she was coming back. Thorpe knew that he had given her the order to lead those away teams on the surface, since she was the best one for the job. He knew that it was a gamble sending her there, but he had a certain amount of confidence that she would not make the kind of mistake that would cause the alien device to snatch them.. It was a gamble that had turned out wrong. He could say that if he had to do it all over again, he would send her again, but he was not fully convinced he could actually do it.
"Sir," Vorwoorts remarked, as she looked up, "We're being hailed."
"Who?"
"The governor, sir."
"Put her on," the man said, as he stepped forward and looked up as Whitmore's image appeared on the main viewscreen. She was sitting at her comfortable desk, but leaning a little forward. "Captain," she started, speaking quickly, "Our instruments here indicated another energy surge at Adamsburg. Did you cause that?"
"It would appear to be the case," Thorpe replied. "However, it was not intentional."
"Then you had people in Adamsburg?"
"Yes, sixteen of them."
Looking down a bit, Whitmore added, "I am sorry to hear that, captain. Do you have any idea what caused the event to happen, and have you learned anything more about it?"
"We're still working on that. I have no idea what happened."
"How are we going to proceed?"
"I don't know yet," Thorpe replied. Strangely, he did not want to talk right now, and certainly did not want to talk to someone like Whitmore. "We'll have to analyze the data that we have collected, and see if there's anything in that that could've saved them." It sounded so clinical to say that, Thorpe thought. It sounded wrong
"I'll leave you to your work, then."
Once the message ended, Thorpe said, "I'll be the in the ready room. Let me know the results, if any, that you got from studying the alien energy surge..."
It was the strangest sensation. Matsubara could not quite comprehend it. Her whole body seemed to go numb. All sensations, all sensory input, was lost, but something was making her mind do tricks. She heard this whistling, squealing sound, except that it was not really there. It was like she imagined it. She saw something that looked like rings of light and shooting stars, but that was not there either. The sensation was like her body was being torn apart, but everything was intact. Nothing worked anymore. Oddly, her mind was still comprehending, and she thought that this was what it felt like to go through a transporter system. The mind simply could not comprehend what it was never intended to, and so replaced the incomprehensible with what the mind could interpret. It was just that this was taking so long.
The squealing sound became more intense, so much so that Matsubara found herself reaching up to cup her ears-and found that her body responded. She seemed to stumble and fall, and ended up on her side on what seemed like a cold slab. Her body felt unbelievably cold, and in response, she was shivering and clutching at her body. It was not just her that was cold, but the air was cold too, and as she breathed, the coldness of the air seemed to cut into her.
"Damiko," Guererro said, as he reached over and shook her on the shoulders. "You still with us?"
She turned, and looked at the man, apparently none the worse for wear, but she could see his breath. At first, she felt a little stiff, but some warmth soon started to flow through her body. "We survived it?"
"But look where we are."
Guererro, who seemed to have recovered from the alien transport effect more rapidly than the others, helped Matsubara to her feet. She looked around, taking in so much with her eyes, and then said, softly, "Oh my god." She looked again. The scale, the vastness of the place, was simply overwhelming. The sixteen members of the Athena within Adamsburg when the incident happened were scattered throughout a vast area, which likely was at least two kilometres in diameter. The ceiling was about three hundred metres above the ground, and supported by a number of surprisingly narrow columns that formed three concentric circles around the centre of the open area. The columns were all located on radii that were equally spaced around the circular plan of the room, and it was along these that the raised floor had been placed. In the spaces between, a fine-mesh covering was glowing a light red from underneath, and this faded until it was as indistinct as the rest of the floor. A similar pattern of hard surfaces and glowing material was duplicated on the distant ceiling. It all reminded Matsubara of a transporter system, scaled up to unreasonable size-and she realized that was exactly what they were dealing with here.
The three found themselves fairly close to one of the walls along the circumference. They could see at two locations, on opposite sides, were large doors, easily able to handle a starship of moderate size. Along the rest of the space were a number of platforms, raised hatches and observation locations, now mostly in the dark. In fact, the diminishing red light was threatening to push most of the open area into darkness.
"This place can hold a starship, easily," Matsubara remarked.
"Maybe that's the intention."
Ninyear had quite a different reaction, "Why'd you do that for? Now we're stuck here."
"Nobody's saying anything about being stuck here," replied the science officer.
"But Raymond was careless."
"I could not account for the rock coming apart like that."
"You could've been more careful."
"I was very careful."
Ninyear continued, "Now we're stuck here with no food and no chance for survival."
"Enough," Matsubara remarked, raising her voice so that she could be heard. "We all knew that when we went into Adamsburg, especially into the mines, we ran the risk of this happening to us. Right now, there's no need to panic. Clearly, some alien technology brought us here, and it's our job to bring us back. I can't accept that the technology works in one direction only."
"Right," Ninyear protested. "The Odonans tried and failed. What makes you think you can succeed where they failed?"
"I do not know, but I also know that we can't give up now. Undoubtedly, the Athena is doing what it can to bring us back." Despite what she was saying, Matsubara did feel a little twinge of panic. This was, naturally, an alien planet located... somewhere. It was possible to find water, and it might even be possible to find edible food that at least could provide them with food energy, but not the proteins, vitamins and other nutrients that they needed. On the other hand, all the vegetation, including farm crops, had also come along on this transporter. As her eyes adjusted to the dimming light, she saw lots of plant matter lying about. She knew that the Odonans lost an away team and a town to this, and if they had this kind of plant matter and other organic material, perhaps they could survive. However, they were never rescued, and the Odonans do not readily give up on their people. She was sure there was a way out of this, but could not think of any way to even start on this problem.
"What happened?" asked Lieutenant Margaret Stanslavia, another of the away-team leaders, as she approached with the two ensigns who had been working with her. "Did one of you set it off?"
"It was an accident," Guererro remarked. "I was gathering samples."
Stanslavia seemed angered at the idea. "The captain gave specific orders not to do anything like that."
"I was just taking samples of the surrounding rock. I did not intend to even touch the mysterious flat section we saw."
"The what?"
Matsubara explained, "I think that the miners uncovered part of the alien structure. It looks like rock, but appears to be very smooth, and is likely contained by some kind of energy field that not only protects the structure, but fools sensor beams into thinking that it is seeing nothing but solid rock. Perhaps attacking it or trying to cut into it might have activated the device and transported them to us."
"And all I did was accidentally hit that flat section with a small pick," Guerrero remarked.
"Wonderful," Lieutenant Richard Turokuot said in reply.
"It was an accident."
"But if you hadn't been taking samples," Stanslavia started.
"Enough," Matsubara cut in, again. "Regardless of how or why we got here, the fact is, we're here now. We have to deal with it."
"Easier said than done," Ensign Orten Waye remarked. "I've scanned outwards to the limit of my tricorder, but the walls and the floors and the rest seem to block sensor beams as effectively as the structure on Charamand."
Matsubara did think of one thing. "If the Adamsburg people all came here, where are they now? Why would they leave this area?"
Turokuot answered, "Maybe because they can't see too much. Once the last of this light disappears, it could become pitch dark in here."
"Yes, perhaps. This can't be all there is. Maybe the Adamsburg people are out there, trying to survive, trying to learn more. It's what we're going to be doing too."
"Unfortunately."
"Regardless," Matsubara started. She was beginning to realize that she was in charge of all of these people, and she had no idea if she was really ready for this. "The first thing we must do is gather everybody together, and see what else lies in this area. Hopefully, we can contact the Adamsburg people."
"And the aliens behind this device," Ninyear added.
"Them too."
Thorpe sat behind the desk in the ready room. His first thought was to attempt to contact the Odonan ship, and give the commander-or the person that the commander was bringing here-a piece of his mind for the refusal to share information. However, he did not even know what ship was on its way here, and he had the feeling the Odonans might not want to talk. There was the war going on, afterall, and it was not possible to communicate with the Odonans at a sufficient level of encryption. No, he thought, ranting at the Odonans was not going to help.
He had to think about what to do next, but his mind was a blank. All he knew was that the three of them, with Matsubara among them, had apparently been concentrating on one part of the mine face, as if they had found something of interest. It was too bad that he had not insisted on open commlinks, so he could hear what was going on down there. Now he had no idea what they had done wrong.
The door chime sounded. Thorpe called out more by instinct than anything else, "Come."
Johnson entered the room, walking towards the desk as the door closed behind her. "Sir," she started, speaking in a slightly subdued voice. "We've completed the analysis of the energy event. The patterns, energy levels and the other attributes are all unlike anything we've seen before. I'm not sure if it was a disruptive field or a transporter field, based on what we could scan."
"I see."
"However, we did do another series of scans on the surrounding environment, working on the theory that if the away teams were... vapourized, then some of their molecules would have entered the surrounding air, altering its composition. If their mass was completely turned to energy, then we should've seen ionization effects in the walls and in some of the air molecules."
"Did you?"
"We saw nothing of the kind. A sensor analysis of the air detected carbon dioxide in patterns consistent with three humans breathing upto that moment. The dispersal pattern of the air around their locations are more consistent with transporter activity than with a destructive event, as determined by looking at various properties of the air."
"So it seems much more likely that they were transported than killed?" Thorpe asked. Strangely, he had already suspected as much. The away teams, and Matsubara, had not been killed by the device, but what were their survival chances?
"It seems almost certain that they were transported, and not killed."
"I see."
Johnson stood there for a few seconds, trying to think of the appropriate thing to say. She, like all the other officers on the bridge, was aware of the relationship between Thorpe and Matsubara. Johnson had gone through her Starfleet career feeling that relationships across the hierarchy were not a good thing, although she could also understand the exception on the part of the captain. She was worried that he was thinking too much about Matsubara, and not so much on the larger problem. "What is your recommendation for how we can proceed?"
That question caught Thorpe by surprise, and only one thing came to mind. "Unfortunately, commander, I don't think there's much we can do. The cloaking field surrounds the structure, and any attempt to penetrate it simply sends people off to some unknown location. We don't even know if the Odonans have moved beyond that."
"Sir," Johnson started, "it's entirely possible that the fifteen people who are missing may be able to work on this from the other side. They are, afterall, experienced officers with a variety of expertise among them, and they have equipment like tricorders and phasers and the forcefield belts, although they did not apparently work in this case. They have the training and the expertise that the inhabitants of Adamsburg do not have. Perhaps they can unravel the process at the other end and run the process in reverse to return back here."
"Yes, I guess that's possible. We don't have many other options."
"I know."
"We just have to sit here and wait for the Odonan ship to show up, as they might have additional information, and we'll have to wait to see if there's any chance that the away teams can find their way home."
"Yes, I know. We're continuing to work with the data to see if there is more useful information in there."
"Very well, keep me informed." Johnson took several steps towards the door when the captain added, "Commander, I want you to send a message to Starfleet Command, and inform them that fifteen members of this crew have joined the Adamsburg people... somewhere."
"Starfleet could notify the families. Isn't it a little premature?"
"Don't provide names. The Odonans seem to have an information tap somewhere. Perhaps they'll be informed of this, and they might finally want to talk."
"The ship should be here within a day."
"I know, but you know me. Sometimes I want the answers now. I especially want these answers now..."
Next Chapter, Previous Chapter, or Novel Home Page
or jump to a chapter:
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20 and Chapter 21.
