Go to:
Once more, Captain Thorpe was in the office of the governor, Josephine Whitmore. Although Thorpe had been here just a couple of days ago, it certainly seemed longer to him given all that had occurred in between. The surroundings looked the same, and Whitmore looked the same, with the same long blond hair that was tied back, but she seemed tired now. Undoubtedly, she had been putting in long days, dealing with this situation both with the people on Charamand and the bureaucrats back at the Department of Colonization. She was as concerned as any other over what had happened in Adamsburg, but she was learning so little. She was not in frequent contact with the starship-now joined by another, alien, ship-that had been summoned to the planet to help. It was not as if she could simply contact the ship and speak to the captain, so she did not mind at all when she was told Thorpe wanted to meet with her. She had many questions and concerns. * * * Matsubara and the other officers, except for Stanislava, had returned to the main section of the alien structure. The archaeologist was left behind to help the Adamsburg survivors and to relay information as necessary between the civilians and the Starfleet officers. Back inside the structure, Matsubara found that Turokuot and some of the others were examining the other large door. Turokuot, whose gaze seemed permanently fixed at his tricorder, said, "I'm not sure what all of this does, but there is a lot of electronics here, a lot of stuff I'll never understand without taking the structure apart. There's a lot of stuff here just for a door." * * * Officers from the Athena, accompanied by a number of the Charamandian police, entered the town of Jonesborough. Six hundred people lived in this town, and like the larger Adamsburg, the main occupation was mining and mineral processing, although Jonesborough was also the home base for a number of farmers. Most of the people in the town had heeded the call to evacuate, although there was a lot of grumbling on what might happen to their town while they were gone. On the other hand, many people in Jonesborough knew people in Adamsburg, and realized that if whatever the Federation and the alien starship were planning to do, if it brought back the people from Adamsburg, then the loss of their trees and vegetables would be a price worth paying. * * * On the Athena, the cargo hold just outside of the main cargo transporter was filled with a piece of equipment that was not standard on a starship. The self-propelled mining phaser assembly looked something like the "mole machine" of old-time science fiction, in that it was a cylindrical machine with a cone-like front end. The cone was studded with phaser and laser ports of various sizes and function. It could run on its own power, and could be operated from within, but they were commonly employed connected to an electroplasma power supply and were operated by remote control. * * * Hakamura and Dunning approached another of the ramshackle buildings on the outskirts of Jonesborough. Seeing what looked like a shed that appeared to have no prefabricated components whatsoever, Hakamura had to once again wonder about the mentality of somebody who lived primitively when the fruits of six hundred years of human industrial prowess were at his disposal. 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 6
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.
Thorpe did not come alone. He was in the company of an Odonan woman, wearing the uniform of the Odonan Space Service and the rank pins of a commander. She seemed to be the "expert" that the Odonans were sending, since it seemed unlikely that someone with the rank of commander would be in command of a top-line, Epic-class starship. "Good afternoon, captain," Whitmore started, using her polished and practiced politician's voice. She nodded gently in the direction of the Odonan.
"Governor, this is Commander Zhi Len Takoo of the Odonan Space Service."
She stared at the woman tentatively, and explained, "I... do not have any kind of translator implant right now."
"That's not a problem," Takoo replied. "I'm comfortable speaking in English."
Taking her seat behind the big desk, Whitmore got to the point. "Captain, you have not been exactly talkative. I've heard more from the officers manning the roadblocks and the quarantine than from you. There was another energy spike."
"I've been busy. I had trusted my first officer to provide regular updates."
"Perhaps," Whitmore said softly, realizing that information filed from the first officer had been ignored because in her hectic schedule. She had not deemed it important. "Nevertheless, you are here now. I hope that you have brought good news."
"In a manner of speaking," the captain started. "I'll let Zhi Len explain." The two visitors sat down in the chairs across the desk from where Whitmore was seated. Takoo explained the situation, in much the same manner as she explained it to the Athena officers earlier, detailing her experiences at Norg, what she had seen and where she had assumed the people had gone to, what happened to the Athena away teams and what they needed to do to get them back.
"That is an undertaking fraught with a lot of difficulty," the governor said. She had sat forward, paying rapt attention to every one of Takoo's softly-spoken words. "I get the sense that there are a lot of unknowns here, a lot of assumptions."
"I've been though this device. I know how it works. Although parts of this might seem tedious and could even be difficult for all of those people, I simply see no other way to do this."
"The device cannot be run in reverse?"
"I don't know that. That would require understanding the alien operating systems, and the alien language and the like. It's also unlikely that the Adamsburg people are in the same location as were the people from Norg went. They might've spread out and found shelter and the like."
Whitmore, who had heard what had happened at Norg, was still tentative. "I'm still uneasy about this, still worried that this could be some kind of one-way journey."
"The mistakes at Norg won't be repeated here," Takoo remarked. "That was based on a lack of information. We don't have that problem now. We have a clearer idea of what is going on, and so we won't do the same things again."
"I see."
Thorpe was starting to get a little impatient at this. He had hoped that they could brief the governor, and she would agree to their plans and do what was necessary on her part. Now she had pointless questions, and they had not even come to the last part yet. Listening to her prompted just one thing on his mind, and he found that those words were coming out. "Governor, I was wondering... you seem to have doubts. Time is essential to get these people back, so if you're hesitating, I was wondering if it is because you have a superior plan?"
Whitmore, and even Takoo, looked over at him, and she asked, "Captain?"
"I know that the life of a politician is slow and measured, each step considered carefully, but the life of a starship captain is different. It is marked with the demand for instant decisions, on either little or a lot of data. At times, I am leaning towards the latter. The Adamsburg people, and my officers, are a long way away in the Small Magellanic Cloud. They have limited or no access to food, the water situation is uncertain, and conditions may be extreme. Many of them were not in situations where they could adjust quickly to a survival situation. While we sit here and dither, people could be dying hundreds of thousands of light years away."
"I wasn't aware that we were dithering."
"Commander Takoo, please tell the governor the last aspect of the plan."
Takoo turned away from Thorpe, and said, "Yes. At Norg, as the Prodakh fired upon the artifact, the zone of space where everything was removed expanded. We believed that it was attempting to reach out to the ship and 'blank' it to stop the attack. Although in our scheme, the firing would be from within the mine and so the artifact might not expand the zone, we cannot discount it."
"What does that imply?"
Takoo looked around, and saw the topographic map that was displayed on the big screen in the room. "This is the planet?" she asked. Whitmore simply nodded, so the Odonan walked over to the map and looked it over. "Can you isolate the part of the planet where the Federation is operating?"
Whitmore used some controls to cause the image to zoom in on one small section of the map. This expanded out into the valley where the cities that made up the human presence on Charamand were located. The extent and size of the various towns and Charamand City were shown, as was the road and mag-lev train routes. The places were named, so Takoo easily found Adamsburg. She looked it over, saying, "Is it possible to display somehow the limits of the barren zone?"
"How wide was it?"
"A diameter of sixteen kilometres."
Whitmore again used controls on her desk to generate a circle representing a diameter of sixteen kilometres around the mine location, which was the centre of the barren area and not the town itself. "Okay, expand that out to a diameter of three hundred kilometres."
"Three hundred kilometres!" Whitmore replied.
"I'd rather be prudent than foolish." The governor did as asked, and the circle indicating the possible extent of the blanking was extended outwards almost twenty times as far as the original distance. Even Takoo could see that a number of towns fell into that zone, and that it reached almost to the edge of Charamand City. "We will need to evacuate these towns and cities."
"That's impossible. There's almost ten thousand people in those towns, and within the area you're defining there. To evacuate them will not be easy, and they would have no place to go."
"Hopefully, they'll be out of their homes for only a short time."
"But the vegetation, the plants, the pets, the farm animals and the rest. Surely you must have a better plan."
"I do not."
Whitmore sat there, and thought it over. Thorpe sat there and watched her, while getting the feeling that she would have wanted to discuss this with the members of the council that helped her run this planet. He wondered what was taking her so long. She should have simply accepted that certain things needed to be done in order to get the lost people back-and Matsubara and his other missing officers as well. Lives were in the balance here. The decision should have been a simple one.
"I want to do what's right, but this will not be easy," the governor said. "The logistics of this can be difficult."
Thorpe answered, "Couldn't you just make an announcement and inform the people in the affected zone that they have to evacuate? Surely they want to do what's right for the people of Adamsburg, and don't want to be left behind and subject to the same fate."
"Most do, but some will not want to leave. Some will have... concerns."
"I wonder how much their concerns will matter when they end up on a planet in the Small Magellanic Cloud."
"Captain, I will do the best that I can in this matter. This is a free society, afterall, and if we suggest that people do something, while stating the consequences of not doing it, then it is really up to them. We just can't order people around. As a starship captain, perhaps you can, but as a governor, I cannot."
Thorpe calmed down a little, and finally said, "Of course. I did not expect that this evacuation could be done instantly. We still need to work on the device that will actually do the penetrating. I just hope that the people will understand the need for a little inconvenience."
"So do I, captain..."
"But where does it lead to?" the science officer asked.
"I don't know, maybe to the equipment underneath that chamber there."
"Can you open it?"
"I think I've isolated the circuits and the switches that open it."
"Then do it."
Turokuot just had the feeling that was not a wise thing to do right now, but if Matsubara was ordering him to open the door, then he would. He stood off to the side, and pressed the button, while monitoring the flows of power at various strengths through the surrounding structure. This door did not open immediately. Instead, almost ten seconds passed before the hatch rose slowly into the ceiling. What they saw was the most inexplicable and unexpected thing.
"A blank wall?"
Matsubara stepped through the doorframe and put her hand on the stone and metal wall that was right behind the doorway. It felt real, as real as her sense of touch could tell her. She looked from within at the complicated banks of machinery and the fine components used in operating the door.
"What is this?" Guerrero asked, "a door to nowhere?"
"Actually, no," Turokuot remarked, as he suddenly realized what he had here. The pitch of his voice seemed to rise. "This is a door to somewhere, somewhere very important for us. It's the way home."
"How?" Matsubara asked.
"We already know that this facility is linked to the one on Charamand. We know that somehow it beamed us and the plants and everything else from there to here instantly-or at least we assume instantly. It is using technology that we can't understand yet, so it could also use what is likely related technology and create a doorway that basically links this location with the structure on Charamand, perhaps some kind of instantaneous translational portal."
Guerrero continued, "So if we turn this thing on, we can go home?"
"If only it was as simple as that."
As Turokuot said those words, something else came on, the lights inside the small control area, and throughout the lowered section and even into the cavernous enclosure as well. The light was almost blinding for the officers, who had spent what seemed like at least a day in very dark surroundings. Matsubara was almost blinded by the brightness of the light-or at least the relative brightness. As her eyes acclimatized to the new light level, she noticed it was not as bright as it seemed at first. "Who did that?" she asked.
"Don't look at me," Turokuot remarked. "I'm not pushing a button until I fully understand what it does, but maybe opening the door here turned on the lights."
"I don't know," Guerrero added. "I don't think any of us were doing anything besides what we just did."
"There's more," Ninyear said, as she walked over. "Some of these vents, they're working again, giving us some air, and warmth too." Matsubara went over to one of the vents, and put her hands in front of it. Not much of a breeze was coming out, but what was coming out was decidedly warm.
Matsubara, still savouring at least some warmth on her cold hands, said, "I wonder if our presence here has caused some kind of life support system to come on, and prepare this facility for inhabitation."
"I'll believe that when I find a replicator."
Turokuot added, "But what happened when the Adamsburg people came here? Did they leave and have everything shut down on them again?"
Matsubara just shrugged her shoulders, saying, "I don't know."
The science officer returned to the main level of the cavern. The reddish glow from within the floor and from the large coil-like structures on the roof did not return, while the light seemed to be coming from more conventional lights that were located in beams among the coils, and on the walls and along what looked like some kind of observation deck. Seeing this reminded the science officer of a shuttlebay scaled up to ridiculous proportions. She could also see how much vegetation debris had been brought along. Much of it was trees and grass and weeds, things that were totally inedible, but she could see what looked like fruit and vegetables, and even some scurrying, shuffling motions that revealed themselves to be cats and dogs and some smaller mammals, which included pets from the people of Adamsburg. Now, Matsubara had the feeling that they might become food. At least the task of gathering up anything useful was now much easier for the security officers and the others left behind. They had plenty of light to do their work by.
"What's going on?" Culins asked.
"I don't know," Matsubara answered.
"I was kind of hoping that you're telling us that the appearance of light means that you've managed to activate the system, including the one that sends us all back to Charamand."
"I had nothing to do with turning on the lights."
"And the heat," Gorwitz mentioned.
"But I hope that perhaps this will help us find out what we need to know to return home. It's possible that we might have to do it ourselves, and that the rest of the crew on the Athena, or those on that Odonan ship, cannot do much for us."
"Somehow, we'll find the way."
"A lot of food here?" Matsubara asked, changing the topic slightly.
"Not really. There are some potatoes here, some corn, some beans, but none of it fully ripe yet. The other vegetables were nowhere near ready. We got all the bugs, though."
"And other animals too."
"Most of the animals, the pets especially, might have fled during the initial confusion, and perhaps hid. Now they're coming out."
"Hopefully, we can all go back home soon."
Guerrero stepped up to the main level of the cavern, and shouted out, "Commander, Lieutenant Stanislava is attempting to contact you."
She tried tapping her commbadge, and realized that the fields within the walls of the structure that blocked sensor beams were blocking communications signals as well. "Did she say what about?"
"I'm not sure, but it sounds like that something that they uncovered when the lights came on is significant."
"Okay."
Matsubara made the trip to the hatch that led outside. It was still open, which allowed communications between the two halves of the large complex. Stepping outside, and feeling the cold even more now, the woman tapped her commbadge and said, "Matsubara to Lieutenant Stanislava."
Within seconds, she heard the chirping of the commbadge and a voice from the other end. "Stanislava here."
"What did you find?"
"Commander, we found something that looks like a glorified subway station. It's absolutely amazing. I think it's some kind of localized transport station, and there's something more here. I'll show you."
"I'm on my way," the science officer replied. She left the others behind to continue to study what Turokuot was already calling the gateway home as she began the long crossing, in the company of security officer Ensign Craig Warner and Guerrero. Little was said on the trip over, although Warner did spend his time looking at the columns, which were still unlit, and wondered what they were. Matsubara was just thinking about what Stanislava had found. Like many officers, Stanislava realized that sometimes words did not fully convey what she was seeing, and seeing it in person was the only way to get the impressions across. It was why Stanislava and the others did not even attempt to explain what they were seeing, but were making the more senior officers wait until they arrived. Apparently, some captains and other command-level officers did not like that approach, and would demand more information on the spot. It was only as she was beginning the trip across the open area that she realized that she should have asked for more information. Matsubara simply was not used to this being in command thing.
The three made it across to the opposite entrance, without getting too cold. "You're right, ma'am," Warner finally said. "Keeping moving helps deal with the cold. You don't feel it after awhile."
"It doesn't get cold where you come from?"
"No," the man said. "Brownsville, Texas, doesn't get anything like this."
"Brownsville?"
"Southernmost point in the continental United States-except for Florida."
Once the three arrived, they were met at the entrance by Stanislava. She also noticed that the Adamsburg people were starting to use whatever containers they could find to start to gather up the ice and the snow to melt and turn it into water. She was not sure of the safety of that. However, back at the cavern, a large number of trees had come across, so there was wood for burning if they needed to boil the water in order to make it safe. Finding the archaeologist, Matsubara asked, "What is it that you've found?"
"Personally, I think it's the reason why the power came back on. With our flashlights, we were able to enter the central part of the building. We found this series of ramps heading down, and went down to see where they went. It was the transport station. As soon as we entered it, the lights and the heat came on."
"I see. Lets see what you've found."
The walk was a good five minutes, mostly down ramps and along some rather broad and now well-lit walkways. Matsubara did not scan much, since the tricorder could not penetrate the walls, but she did look. The walls were made of some kind of metal, and were more functional than decorative. The floor was also made of some kind of metal, and though it had the sheen of metal, it sounded more like polished stone when the four officers walked with their boots on it. What got the notice of Matsubara was the condition of the structure, and how everything appeared to be functional and in very good repair. It made her wonder what kept up the maintenance here, how old the structure was and whether or not it was in use at any time. She also noticed an absence of the sentient armadillo bodies.
After the trip along the broad corridors, the spiraling ramps led downwards to what was likely the lowest level of the structure. The corridor ended in what looked like a broad pair of doors, but they were open. Several of the Adamsburg people were milling around, talking to each other and generally looking a little puzzled, if not concerned. These people were not explorers, and likely did not share the sense of wonder that was the hallmark of most Starfleet officers. What Matsubara thought was something that might be worth further study, the civilians worried over and regarded with a fair amount of fear.
The group entered the main area, and as it was described to her, it did look like an oversized subway station, and storage yard as well. At each end of the hundred-metre long structure were three tunnels, each sealed off by some kind of door. Those tunnels opened into deep grooves in the floor, and in the centre of the groove was a thick, shiny pipe that likely was a rail and also a power conduit for the vehicles that travelled through those tunnels. Walkways reached over the three tracks, with stairways connecting the walkways to the platforms in the middle. At the far end were several perpendicular tracks, which connected to the network at the far track. The vehicles were rather simple in design, basically a roughly-aerodynamic yet basic shape, with windows in the front, and some doors behind the front section. Smaller windows ran down the lengths of the vehicles, and at regular intervals, doors were also present. To Matsubara, the vehicles bore a more than passing resemblance to the elevated trains she remembered so well from her youth in Kyoto.
Matsubara attempted to scan through the tunnel hatches, but the tricorder could not probe through. She also scanned the monorail track, and found indications that superconducting conduits were providing power and also some kind of magnetic lift. The superconductors were not the room-temperature varieties that were so important to Federation technology, but required extensive cooling to operate. However, the tricorder scan indicated that the temperature differential in the core and the surface was not what a sustained cooling would imply. Instead, it seemed that power was turned on to this system only recently, perhaps at the same time as when the power was turned on.
"You entered the room, and the power came on?" Matsubara asked, as Stanislava was standing nearby.
"More or less, yes," the other woman remarked.
Guerrero was nearby, and asked, "So where does it go?"
Matsubara took a guess, "The neighbouring structures, the ones that we had seen outside."
"Does it go everywhere on the planet?"
"I don't know, but I would imagine that it would reach everything built here," Matsubara remarked, as Stanislava moved on to look over other parts of the facility. Matsubara looked at the crossover walkways, as she thought about going over and checking on the vehicles parked on the other side. She did look around, and noticed that increasing numbers of the Adamsburg people were coming in and looking around as well. She just hoped that none of them got the idea of getting into the vehicles and trying to operate them. She continued, "It's possible that this might be able to take us to a central location, which might give us information on who built this, why they built it, and more importantly, how to operate it."
Once more, the archaeologist called out, saying, "Commander, there's one more thing."
"What?"
"The system map, and a mark from someone who has been here before."
Along the same wall as the entrance was a depression that led down to what had to be a control centre of some type, using the same type of recessed and partly hidden approach to design that she had seen in the main cavern. Dominating a wall was what Stanislava called the "system map." What Matsubara saw was a bunch of circles that formed roughly an "X" pattern, and between them were a number of small lines, which also tended to emphasize the "X" pattern, or which connected the points of the "X" to the adjacent ones. In addition, the majority of the circles were towards the end of the "X," and none of them were in the middle. Each circle had in the centre two rows of four dots, which was either black or white. Three of the circles appeared to be lit up in a lighter blue, with two almost adjacent to each other and the other far away on another arm of the "X." One circle was outside of the "X", and was shaped differently, and with some alien writing around it. It was the only alien writing that was part of the display, but Matsubara and the others saw some alien writing that had been added on much later, with some kind of paint. Although the script was alien, all three of them recognized it instantly.
"That's Odonien," Matsubara said, upon seeing the writing that had been painted on beside one of the two closely-spaced circles that was lit in blue. "Unfortunately, I can't read it."
Stanislava could, saying, "It means simply, 'nothing here.'"
Guerrero remarked, "It looks like the Odonans who ended up here from Norg have somehow survived. They must've found the transport system and tried to explore and see if there was anything out there, anything that they could use in their attempt to get back."
"That they didn't doesn't bode well for us," Stanislava said.
"Not necessarily," Matsubara replied. "Only part of an away team was left behind when the incident happened that the Odonans were not talking about, the one that ruined the planet. Who knows what their fates were. The rest of them were like the Adamsburg people, untrained and unprepared for exploration and understanding of their surroundings. There are more of us here, and I think that we can solve this." Matsubara continued to examine the display. She noticed that the pattern of lit and dark dots was different for each circle, and that only two circles in the immediate area were lit with a blue background. That had to be significant. "You don't think that the blue circles indicates the locations where people are located?"
"That's possible," Guerrero remarked. "Which is the Odonan one?"
"This adjacent one?"
"What are the odds of that?"
Matsubara thought about that, and she also saw something in the display that tugged at her memory. She remembered something else. "Actually, this might mean something. Imagine that this display is rotated so that this bar of the 'X' is pointed straight downward." She was referring to the bar that was pointing up and to the left. "Visualize it. Does it remind you of something."
"The wormhole network," Guerrero remarked. "A cluster of planets along the apparent course of the wormholes, and more clusters around the terminal points. I wonder if this is a galaxy-wide system somehow connected to the wormhole network?"
"Maybe."
Stanislava pointed to the more remote blue circle, and asked, "I wonder who's there. That would correlate with the Delta Quadrant if Damiko's interpretation is correct."
"More importantly, what's down there?" Guerrero said, referring to the special symbol that was set off from the rest.
"Maybe that's the central hub, the main point on this network that would allow us to control the master systems. Can we go there?"
"Can we control those vehicles?"
"I think it's possible, since the Odonans must've, if they're travelling around. We can contact the Odonans-who clearly have been exploring on their own-and we can attempt to access the central station, if the Odonans have not done so already."
"That worries me," Guerrero remarked. "If that is the solution to the problem, then the Odonans should've already discovered it. I know what you said about us having more trained officers rather than just civilians, but the Odonans have sixty-one years of lead time, and lots of time to learn. They came here when the location was unoccupied, so what does that suggest?"
"I don't know," Stanislava replied.
Matsubara answered, "They couldn't do anything with the control centre, and so they began a program of exploring the other, nearby, stations to see if there was anything to learn, any information, anything that could help them. They might have left that marker as a way to help them remind themselves that they had found nothing here."
"Perhaps." She was about to comment on how they should contact the Odonans and see what they learned, and then attempt to enter the control centre and see if they could do anything. However, before she could say a word, she noticed something on the display. The others noticed it too. The outside boundary of one of the circles lit in blue started to flash in red. "What's that? What does that mean?"
"If only I knew," Matsubara remarked. She looked round, but saw no other sign of anything going on. She wanted to contact Turokuot back at the portal that linked this place with Charamand, but she knew her communicator would not get a signal out. She wanted to know if anything was going on that might have caused this change in condition. However, she had to admit since the change appeared on this particular display, it had to involve the transport system of some kind.
Guerrero did not hesitate to speculate. "Well, maybe the Odonans, if the blue lighting indicates a facility that is in use, saw that this one was suddenly active, and they sent out one of the transport vehicles to explore and find out. Maybe they saw the same thing in the shape of this that we're seeing."
"I don't believe that the Odonans would be aware of the wormhole network. That was not discovered until after the business with the Voyans, but I believe this mission happened before that. They can't have that interpretation. Maybe they are just exploring, or reacting to sensor readings." As she spoke, Matsubara became aware of a slight humming sound. Many others in the room were noticing it too. She took out her tricorder and tried to locate the source. Although the superconducting rails might not have been causing the sound, the power levels in one of the tracks was rising dramatically. "A vehicle may be coming."
Seconds later, one of the tunnel hatches over the more-active track snapped open. Lights appeared, and almost immediately after, and accompanied by a substantial blast of rather fetid air, the vehicle moved into the station, travelling very quickly but also stopping equally quickly. The vehicle, a connected series of similar-looking subway-like cars, almost filled the entire length of the station. Matsubara, her tricorder still out, saying, "I don't think they're Odonans."
"Then what?"
"I don't know."
The vehicle doors snapped open, and from every entrance stormed aliens that Matsubara and the others had not seen before. They were not immediately distinctive, since they were humanoid, and their height was not that much different than the range of heights in humans. Their builds were not that different either, as some appeared to be stronger and more muscular, and others were more slender in appearance. The first thing that Matsubara noticed was that they had a bluish-gray skin, and the complexion looked very pale. Again, the variation in skin tones was noticeable. The hair was also bluish-gray, and was somewhat unkempt. It came in various lengths and textures and was often held back by headbands and even bandannas. The aliens, and each of the seven vehicles produced about eight of them, wore a variety of harshly-made clothing, but they were dressed for cold conditions. They were also armed, although the weapons looked primitive and the aliens had no consistent type of weapon.
"What the hell," Guerrero remarked, while Matsubara muttered a coarser oath under her breath. The two of them remembered that they were wearing the Odonan forcefield belts-realizing now that they had done nothing to prevent them from coming here-and it took a simple tap on the belt buckle to turn them on. Matsubara did so, and pulled out her type-two phaser as well.
Without warning, without saying anything, the aliens charged into the crowd that was just beginning to scatter. They were firing willingly into the crowd, with people dropping and running and shrieking and trying to rescue fallen comrades. Matsubara and Guerrero immediately returned fire, with their first blasts stunning three of the rough-dressed aliens. That got the attention of the aliens. Two fired at them, but the forcefield belts easily absorbed the energies from the weapons. Matsubara and Guerrero fired on those two, with Matsubara giving just a second's thought as to where Stanislava and Warner were located.
While the majority of the aliens pursued the suddenly-terrified Adamsburg civilians into the corridor, several who were still in the vehicle opened fire on Matsubara and Guerrero. The first blast knocked the science officer to the ground.
Guerrero helped her up as she said, "Those weapons aren't set on stun!"
He was poised over her as he got hit, and was knocked almost on top of her. Matsubara managed to scramble for her phaser, just as a powerful blast gouged a dark hole into the floor nearby. She returned fire, but missed by a fair margin.
Guerrero picked himself up, and tried to find his phaser. Another blast knocked him down, as he felt what felt like solid heat slam him into the back. "We need cover!" he shouted, but as he looked around, he saw only that the platform was very exposed. He could think of only one cover. He scrambled for the steps that led down to the control level for this station. Matsubara followed him, but was again hit in the back by the full power of the weapon. Whatever it was, it was draining the power out of the belt rapidly. She could just feel this wave of heat, seemingly burn through her uniform. She reached the stairs, just as Guerrero opened fire. One of the alien sharpshooters fell over, and was dragged back inside.
"My back, is it okay?" Matsubara asked.
Guerrero glanced at her, and said, "I see nothing."
"It felt like my back was on fire."
"I know." More bolts shot over their heads, forcing them to duck. They moved down towards the far edge of the stairs, and returned fire. Two shots later, and another of the sharpshooters dropped back into the vehicle. Four remained, and they together opened a barrage of fire in the direction of Guerrero and Matsubara. The bolts shot into the floor, throwing up dust and debris and a little smoke. When the sound paused, Matsubara looked up. For her troubles, she saw a bright red bolt appear just centimetres above her face. She could hear the sound-it was like an explosion-of the beam hitting the wall behind her. In the second she had, she could see that two of the sharpshooters had stepped out of the vehicle, believing that the Federation weapons could only stun. She also saw something more, that the aliens were dragging the unconscious people onto the vehicle.
"You see that?" Matsubara asked.
"What?"
"They're dragging the people they stunned onto their vehicle."
"Damn," the man replied.
They heard voices speaking an alien language, and those voices were getting closer. Matsubara, thinking that if those weapons were fired at them at too close a range, the forcefield belts might not fully protect them. She gestured for Guerrero to move down several metres, and then on her signal, they looked above the top stair and saw the aliens. The two were only four metres away, but were taken by surprise. The one who was closest to her fired wildly and missed. Matsubara fired, with the stun effect enough to knock him backwards. The one closer to Guerrero was only about three metres away, and he fired first. The bolt hit the man right in the neck, and though the forcefield belt absorbed most of the impact, the momentum was enough to knock Guerrero down the short flight of stairs. His phaser spiraled away from him, charred and smoking. That alien turned his weapon on Matsubara, but she fired first, knocking him down. Then she heard yet another near miss, and turned, just in time to see another of the aliens charging towards her. "How many of them are there?" she said to herself. She also felt angry. She saw Guerrero sprawled on the ground, and had no idea of his condition. Almost by instinct, almost driven by a sense of anger, her thumb found the power lever on the phaser. She pressed in and down, almost all the way to the highest setting. She turned, and saw the alien raise his weapon. She fired first, but did not look. She heard a faint scream, and then heard the dull thud of a body hitting a hard surface, although it sounded... different.
She did not look. Instead, she climbed down to the bottom of the stairs, where Guerrero was laying. "Ray," she shouted. "You okay?"
He rolled onto his back, his face sweaty. "I don't think I broke anything," he managed to say. "I wonder if heat alone could sever a neck. Oh man." Despite being groggy, he looked around for his phaser. When he saw it, he said, "We can't afford that. They're coming!"
Matsubara heard nothing in the immediate area. "Maybe not."
"But."
"I stepped up my phaser to a higher setting and... shot one." She showed the man the phaser and the fact that of the twelve power levels, it was sitting on level ten.
"Oh man."
"They're capturing people. Why?"
"I've got a bad idea of what they're going to do."
"No," Matsubara said.
"Food."
"No. It's impossible. They're aliens. It'll never work."
"Then what?" asked the man.
"I don't know."
"We've got to stop them."
Matsubara quickly asked, "How?"
"These forcefield belts seem to work." Guerrero sat up, and then groaned and almost doubled over in pain. "Okay, nothing's broken, but..." More shots streaked overhead. Matsubara gingerly climbed up a few steps, and looked. The alien sharpshooters were back on the vehicle, and they were firing. Six of them were firing, and wildly, throwing up more debris and smoke and dust. Matsubara fired at one of the aliens, her phaser still on level ten. It hit the vehicle by the doorway, throwing off sparks, but the alien ducked back inside. More aliens appeared, carrying and dragging people, men and women, young and old. She had no idea how many, but as this group approached, more covering fire was laid down. The heat was intense as the bolts hit close by, and one struck her a glancing blow. She had to duck again.
Then the firing stopped. The gentle hum came through the floor again, as Matsubara took a chance and looked. She saw that the aliens were back on the vehicle. They had brought back on board the ones she had stunned, and the one that she had shot at power setting ten. They had also captured an unknown number of humans. The hatch to the tunnel opened as the vehicle rapidly accelerated and vanished into the tunnel. The hatch closed, restoring the large open area to silence. Matsubara climbed to the top level, and looked around. Nobody could be seen. "Lieutenant Stanislava," she shouted. "Ensign Warner!" She heard nothing. She tapped at her commbadge and repeated the names, but again, she heard nothing. She reached the main corridor, and looked down its length towards the ramps that led up to the main levels. She saw something, what looked like a person on the ground. She ran towards what she saw, a young woman who laid sprawled on the ground. Matsubara had the fear that this person had not been merely stunned, but killed. However, up close, she saw no visible wounds on the woman, and when she steadied herself and tried to calm down, she could tell that the unconscious woman was breathing. She also noticed something else. A piece of paper had been tucked between the body and her left arm.
Matsubara, knowing that with most stun effects, it was best to make sure that the unconscious person was in a position where he or she could breathe and was not exposed to further injury, and then let the person wake up without any assistance. Seeing that for now, the woman would be fine, she eased out the piece of paper. The paper was clearly old, yellowing and was already starting to rip where it was folded. She opened it up, and saw a message that had been written on it. Whoever had done this note did not have the best form, but Matsubara clearly recognized the characters as belonging to the Preserver script.
She heard footsteps. A number of men were coming down the ramp, carefully, making sure that they would not be surprised. When one of them was able to see down the corridor, he saw Matsubara with the unconscious woman. Still tentative, even when carrying a length of metal pipe, he stepped forward, and asked, "Are they gone?"
"They have retreated to their vehicle and departed," Matsubara remarked. She stood up.
The message was relayed down the line, and more of the civilians appeared. Most of them were men, the taller and stronger ones, in more suitable clothing than the majority of the civilians. They were likely the miners, on duty or about to start their shifts when the event occurred. "They stunned a lot of people," the man said. "Where did they go? Somebody said they were stunning people and hauling them on board their train."
"That appears to be what they did," Matsubara said.
"What's that?" The man walked towards her, pointing to the paper in her hand.
"They left a message."
"What does it say?"
"I haven't decoded it yet."
Another of the men laughed, saying, "I wouldn't hold my breath. I've been around the Federation and I've never seen aliens like that. It's not likely to be in English."
"No, but the next best thing," Matsubara said. "The Preserver script." After a pause, she asked, "Are Lieutenant Stanislava and Ensign Warner with you? The other two Starfleet officers? Did they go with you?"
The men at the front of the group looked at each other, and then at Matsubara. The first man spoke, "I don't know. I don't think so. I wasn't in there. I don't think anybody who was in there got out. Were you in there?"
"Yes," Matsubara remarked. "All four of us, along with a lot of the Adamsburg people, were in there when the aliens showed up. We tried to stop it, tried to fire on them, but they kept coming at us." As she spoke those words, she had the sinking feeling that Stanislava and Warner had been captured, and now were going to meet whatever was the fate of the victims captured by these aliens. She was thinking about what Guerrero had said was their possible fate. She did not want to believe it, she hated to believe it, but she had to admit that it was possible. Two people under her command were now gone.
"And only you survived?"
"No, Lieutenant Guerrero survived, but he's hurt."
The civilians talked among themselves, and then two of them were selected to enter the station itself and see about the lieutenant. The leader of the group remained, and asked, "What are we going to do?"
"I'm not sure yet," Matsubara replied. She was tempted to say, "I don't know," but thought that was a poor choice of words for somebody in command. "We might have to seal off this station, so that the aliens can't get through."
"I see. But what does the paper say? Can you read the Preserver script?"
"No," Matsubara said. She took out her tricorder, and quickly determined that the rugged piece of equipment had survived what she had encountered back in the landing. Because she went into the mine at Charamand knowing it was possible that she could be studying alien technology, she had loaded the Preserver translation routines into the tricorder just in case. She scanned in the characters on the paper, and then had to make some adjustments to tell the tricorder what she felt a poorly-drawn and unrecognizable character might have been, something that would take seconds with a proper computer terminal, but which took much longer with the tricorder. Before she was done, she could see that the two men and Guerrero-walking under his own power-were returning.
One of the men said, "He's going to be fine, but I think he might have bruised, if not broken, ribs. I saw the full he took. Starfleet officers are tough, man, especially those security types."
"Blue isn't security," said one of the few women present. "Blue is sciences."
"Then Starfleet officers are really tough."
The civilian leader said, "Nevertheless, have Doctor Tomczak check him out."
"Aye, sir," the man with Guerrero retorted sharply.
To Matsubara, the leader added, "He might not have his equipment or his medicines, but he knows a thing or two about field medicine, as he has had to be in the mines once or twice for emergency work."
"I see," the Athena officer replied. She finally got all the characters entered to her satisfaction, and instructed the small machine to translate and then parse the translation into standard English. She read it once, with this look on her face. The others were pressing around her.
"What does it say?" said one person, and then another. "Are they telling us to go away and telling us how?"
"No," Matsubara said. "The message is as follows. 'We are the Dorans. We rule this planet. You are our subjects. We will do with you as we please. You cannot stop us. The Dorans.'"
The crowd around her was silent.
After the deadline to evacuate, sensor sweeps from the Athena revealed that not everybody had left. The homes where people stayed behind were identified, and the government officials in Charamand contacted them through the planet's communications system. None apparently listened, so the next stage was to confront them personally.
Lieutenant Sal Hakamura and the Charamandian police officer, Corporal Peter Dunning, were in one of the ground vehicles, approaching one of the buildings on the outskirts of the town. Hakamura was behind the wheel. "You seem to like driving this thing," Dunning commented.
"It reminds me of home."
"Where's home?"
Hakamura, after some thought, replied, "Actually, the planet I was born and raised on is Philentrophia."
"Never heard of it," Dunning admitted.
"It's a fairly large colony now, maybe twenty million people, a fifth humans. It's located near the Odonan border."
"So Odonans live there too?"
"They're another fifth. There were lots of vehicles like this on Philentrophia. On the more advanced planets, like Earth, it's all elevated railroads, public transport systems, electric guided vehicles, even Odonan-style glide cars in some areas. For longer distances, it's transporters or aircraft. It's all computer controlled, with hardly more effort necessary than pushing in a destination button and then sleeping. Manual control is much more... personal."
Dunning laughed, saying, "Try steering it towards one of those trees and see how manual it becomes."
Hakamura said nothing, knowing full well that sophisticated control and safety systems built into even wheeled vehicles like this one made them hard to crash. However, this was not the occasion for stunts. He had the feeling that the captain was waiting with a fair degree of impatience for them to complete the evacuation of Jonesborough so that they could get on with attempting to penetrate the alien structure. He guided the vehicle onto a road that was in such poor shape it looked to be nothing but dirt, and rough dirt as that. It was one of the very few moments when Hakamura appreciated the lift of a hovercar.
The two got out, with Hakamura in his Starfleet uniform, and Dunning in a police uniform whose design lineage showed little change over four centuries. Both were equipped with sidearm phasers, with Dunning's weapon being the somewhat less powerful "civilian issue" phaser, while Hakamura had the more powerful "military issue" phaser. Both hoped to keep their phasers holstered. Hakamura parked the vehicle, and the two got out and walked up to the door, with Dunning taking the lead. The man seemed to know what to do. While Hakamura looked for a button to sound a chime, Dunning simply knocked. The house was small, looking like two prefab units attached with some crude construction in the middle. It also had the aroma of an active farm, another reminder of Hakamura's youth.
Nobody responded to the knocking, so Dunning tried again, knocking harder and shouting, "This is Officer Dunning of the Charamandian police. Open up the door." They still heard nothing, so the man turned to Hakamura and asked, "Is anybody in there?"
Hakamura pulled out the tricorder and did a brief scan. "Two individuals, in one room. I'd still say it's better to simply beam them out."
"Civil rights, remember? Federation citizens have a right to not be transported against their will or without their consent."
"Not even to save their lives?"
About a minute later, with even Dunning's patience being tested, the door opened. A woman peaked through the a slight opening in the door, and said, "I don't believe you. I don't believe what I heard on the radio." Turning her gaze to Dunning's partner, she asked, "Who are you?"
"I'm Lieutenant Sal Hakamura."
"What kind of uniform is that?"
"Starfleet."
"Oh, the space navy," the woman said. Hakamura had not heard the term "space navy" in a long time. Like most officers, he considered the term something of a slur since Starfleet was much more than a "space navy." The woman continued, "You guys are supposed to prevent things like what happened in Adamsburg from happening. Where were you?"
"We can't prevent everything," Hakamura explained. "We just try to help the best we can when something does go wrong."
Dunning continued, "Ma'am, it's important that you, and the other person also here, leave this area and go to the evacuation centre in Charamand City."
"No."
Hakamura explained, sounding as calm as possible. "Ma'am, what's going to happen is that in the attempt to retrieve the people from Adamsburg, the radius of the effect may expand outwards, all the way to Jonesborough. If you do not leave, you might end up in the same location as they are."
"But if you're going to retrieve them, what difference would that make?"
"We are going to attempt to retrieve them. There's no guarantee we're going to succeed. You might end up where they are... permanently."
"And where are they?"
Hakamura answered, "In the Small Magellanic Cloud."
"Where's that?"
"Two hundred thousand light years away."
The woman thought about that, and said, "That's a lot further than that space-navy ship I heard about, the one that somehow found itself on the other side of the galaxy."
"Yes, the Small Magellanic Cloud is a lot farther away."
Once more, the woman was in thought, and came up with another objection. "What about the farm? We have chickens and cows here-don't get us wrong, sirs, the cows are for milk, and the chickens for eggs. If this Adamsburg effect reaches here, we'll lose our cows and chickens."
"All losses will be compensated for," Dunning explained.
"That's what they say, but you don't know the Federation bureaucracy. It takes weeks, months even, for anything to get done. What will we do."
"All needs will be taken care of."
Hakamura stepped in, saying, "Although we value your rights as citizens, we do have the prerogative to save people from themselves, to prevent people from doing something that they know will harm them."
"And what will you do?" asked the woman.
"We'll simply beam you out of here."
Something about the way Hakamura said that, perhaps the tone of his voice, convinced the woman that the two men standing outside her front door were serious, and that the evacuation was serious as well. Maybe, she thought, the effect would never get this far, and the cows and the chickens would still be here. She had another concern, about who would take care of the animals. She asked, "How long will we be away?"
"We're really hoping for just a day, a day and a half on the outside."
Once more, the woman had to ponder it, before she finally said, "Okay."
Later, as Dunning and Hakamura walked back to the vehicle, the local asked, "What's this about the prerogative to prevent people from doing anything that could harm them? I haven't heard of that."
"You've never been in Starfleet..."
Captain Thorpe entered the cargo hold area, and found Dewuchun and other engineers working on the device. "How is it going?"
"Well," Dewuchun started, as he stepped back. "We're turning a piece of mining machinery into a piece of self-propelled phaser artillery. I almost wonder if there is application in the war for something like this."
"Hard to think what the purpose would be except perhaps to break into something," Thorpe replied. "What have you done?"
"First of all, we had to replace the phaser core. The system on this machine is basically the same as that on a shuttlecraft, except that the core is much weaker and less flexible in strength and modulation. For mining, they don't need more. I've replaced the core with one of our full-powered phaser cores, since we've got enough on board. Since we beamed up the machine and can't risk beaming someone down to reattach the power supply, we'll have to provide it. We're swapping in two portable microfusion reactors, which should give the device hours of full-power operation. We're also upgrading the control systems so that we can operate it from the ship."
"How long?"
"I'd estimate four hours." Thorpe just looked at the engineer, wondering if Dewuchun was one of those who followed the time-honoured engineering tradition of taking a repair or work time estimate and doubling it, so that when the work was done ahead of schedule, it would make the engineer look good. He just never knew Dewuchun as that kind of person. "One problem we do face," the Odonan continued, "is that we can't test it on board the ship. I don't think you'd appreciate if we would punch a hole in the hull."
"No, I would not," Thorpe remarked. "You'll have to test it once it's in place, and hope that it works. If not, you'll simply have to beam it up and down, and work on it until it's right."
"Of course," Dewuchun said. He stepped away, quite aware of a certain edge to the voice of the captain, an edge that he had not really noticed before.
"Keep me informed."
Dewuchun went back to the machine. Takoo was among the others working on it, as she was working on the programming for the phaser modulation. She knew what it took to penetrate the alien device on Norg. Seeing the look in the face of the fellow Odonan, Takoo, speaking in Odonien, asked, "Something wrong?"
"Not really, not with me personally. The captain seems unusually stressed, though."
"I've noticed."
"I mean, he's been in worse situations, at Pusedchou for example, and some other incidents that he has discussed. I just have not noticed that before."
"It must be that relationship," Takoo continued, "his romantic relationship with one of the people who have found themselves in the Small Magellanic Cloud."
"Yes, I could imagine that is a cause. Maybe he's worried that the war could call him away at any time."
"Sometimes, I think our way is better."
"Really?" Dewuchun remarked. "If your husband was in some precarious situation that you had the control and ability to solve, how would you feel? I certainly know how I would feel if something like this happened to my wife, or daughter. I still remember Pusedchou."
Takoo thought about it for a moment, and said, "Perhaps you're right. Lets get to work..."
"The town eccentric," Dunning remarked. "Why am I not surprised that he's still here? There's somebody like this in every town."
Hakamura drove up another rundown dirt driveway, stopping the vehicle about ten metres from the shed. The property was actually quite large, something like twenty hectares, and labelled as an "active farm." The only problem was that the only crop growing here was random weeds. The barn in the back looked like it had collapsed. "Sometimes," Hakamura started, "this must be the unpleasant moments about your work."
"Yeah, that's true. I've heard about this guy, Alejendro Wica. He's a weird one, but manages to avoid getting into trouble."
The two got out of the vehicle and walked to the small shed. It was barely six metres to a side, and made of raw wood. It had no visible windows, except for a small one on the door. Dunning took the lead again, as he knocked loudly on the door. Seconds later, Wica answered the door. He was human, about sixty, although he looked older, with a slender build, a heavily lined and wrinkled face and stringy whitish-gray hair. He sounded pleasant enough, "What can I do for you, officer?"
"Governor Whitmore has ordered the evacuation of Jonesborough as a precaution while a Starfleet operation is underway to help recover the people from Adamsburg."
"I don't believe that," the man replied. Wica stood there with the heavy wooden door between him and the two visitors. He watched the two and spoke to them through a six-centimetre gap. "Nothing happened at Adamsburg."
"What do you mean?" Hakamura said. "I've been there. I've saw it. We've also lost members of the crew of my ship."
"No, it's a Starfleet conspiracy. I was in Starfleet once."
Dunning said, "I thought you were on a freighter."
"No, I was in Starfleet, Starfleet Intelligence, in fact. I know their methods. I know how they operate. What they really want is to capture the secret project I'm working on. This is research that will revolutionize our lives, but Starfleet wants to ban it. They have to capture it first. They've tried all kinds of legal means to get my work, but have failed. Now they are trying desperate measures. I know that nothing happened to Adamsburg. I have a friend who lives there, and I was talking to him just a couple of hours ago."
"Really?" the Charamandian officer replied.
"Yes, really."
"I don't know who you were talking to," Hakamura remarked, "but the fact remains that Adamsburg is a ghost town, its people and every living thing gone. The effect that caused that could spread and could reach out this far."
"Utter nonsense," Wica retorted, laughing almost hysterically. "What kind of technology, what kind of power, could transport everybody and everything to the Small Magellanic Cloud?"
Hakamura paused. Although it was general knowledge that the people of Adamsburg had disappeared, and had been transported somewhere, it was not general knowledge on where they had gone to. How did Wica know? "I could show you."
Once more, the old man laughed, saying, "Of course, I'm aware of the old Starfleet trick. You'll contact the ship and have them beam you and me there, to save time, of course. Only we'd not transport to Adamsburg, but to a holodeck on your ship. It's an old trick. I know it well. We did that several times to transport people from one world to another without their knowledge. Starfleet was going to try it with the Baku too."
Hakamura looked over at Dunning, with an unasked question. How does this guy know all of this stuff? Maybe he was a former intelligence agent who cracked under the pressure and ended up out here, alone and cut off, left to rant until his days were done. Dunning spoke up, saying, "During the evacuation, this area will be sealed off. Nobody will come here and attempt to access your secret lab."
Wica all but lunged at Dunning, pushing open the door in the process. "How do you know about my secret lab!"
"I just assumed," said the startled officer. Wica was surprisingly strong and fast, and knocked the younger man over. In so doing, he expertly stripped Dunning of his phaser, and turned it on Hakamura. Without hesitation, he pulled the trigger. The blue bolt momentarily enveloped the security officer, but the forcefield belt kept the worst of it away from him. Seeing this, Wica ran back inside, and closed the door shut. Hakamura had his phaser out, and was ready to burn down the door, but Dunning sat up and grabbed his hand. "We can talk him out of it."
"He's armed now."
"He's also got a phase rifle that, despite being two centuries out of date, is still more lethal than my phaser. We'll talk him out."
"How? Remember, time is a factor here. We should simply have the ship beam him out. Considering that he fired at me, we have every right to do that."
"He's still a civilian," Dunning replied. "He does have certain rights."
"But firing at other people, at Starfleet officers, is not one of them."
"He didn't hurt you. How'd you manage to avoid that anyway?"
"Actually, it's an Odonan forcefield belt," Hakamura explained.
"That Odonan ship has been equipping you?"
"Actually, we had some on board the Athena. We had some since we were at Pusedchou."
Wica, the two realized, was just on the other side of the door. He shouted out, "I wouldn't waste my time trying to transport me to the ship. I've got a transporter scrambler, you know. Here's my warning. In one minute, I'm going to start firing. Remember, I know how to modify this phaser so that it is much more powerful, and I also know the algorithm for the modulation of Odonan forcefield belts, especially the non-personalized ones. This is your only warning."
"Who is this guy?" Hakamura asked.
"I don't know, beyond the fact he's the town weirdo."
"I heard that!" the eccentric man blurted out from within.
Hakamura gestured for the other man to step away from the door. In a softer voice, while keeping an eye on the door, the security officer said, "We need to draw him outside. I can drop him if we do."
"You're pretty confident."
"I've spent a lot of time on the phaser range."
"But if he shoots first."
Hakamura cut in, saying, "Just go to the vehicle and be prepared to drive off. I'll find cover."
"It's risky."
"I think this guy is a nutcase. He's not going to go willingly. I'd hate to saddle the people already in the Small Magellanic Cloud-they already have enough problems-with this guy."
Dunning was very reluctant, but could find no other way to convince Wica to leave what was going to become a restricted zone. On the other hand, he had taken his weapon and he had fired and was threatening to fire again. They could use force. Dunning walked to the vehicle and got inside. The armoured design would offer him some protection against any weapons fire. He started it up, and tried to back it over the rough driveway to get back to the road. He looked around for Hakamura, but could not find him.
The security officer had gotten behind one of the innumerable trees on this property. He was not sure if Wica had seen him take up his position, but he was sure that the man was watching Dunning go to the vehicle and prepare to depart. Hakamura watched his tricorder to monitor the location of Wica. He was huddled near the door, which had the only view out. He had to see Dunning was leaving, and he had to see that the man was alone in the vehicle. As he sat there, Hakamura wondered about Wica. Was he really a former Starfleet Intelligence agent? Maybe T'Kor would know more. It would not be the first time that some burned-out, over-the-edge agent had been retired to some remote corner of the Federation where he would no longer be an influence. Hakamura watched as Dunning drove away, but he was not concerned about that. Afterall, with a quick tap of his commbadge, he could get beamed back to the Athena. Instead, he looked at the tricorder, and tried to derive a way to capture the shed. It had only the one door. The inside was dark, and cluttered with furniture and stuff that was likely just junk. Hakamura doubted a secret laboratory existed anywhere in there.
The tricorder beeped softly. Hakamura turned towards it, and saw that Wica was making his way to the door. He had something in his hands, so Hakamura did a second scan, and found that it was the phase rifle. It was the kind of technology used on Starfleet ships from the earliest days, starting with the Romulan War, and lasting until higher-powered laser and then phaser weapons came into use. On an unshielded individual, a phase rifle could be lethal, but the forcefield belt would provide protection. A phase rifle bolt could not be modulated, and Hakamura doubted that he had the algorithm for the forcefield belt. Afterall, the Odonans said-or claimed-that the algorithms were based on a form of mathematics generally not known in the Federation. He was confident of the advantages that he had.
Wica was at the door, just when Hakamura heard his commbadge sound. It was almost loud enough to give away his position. He tapped it, and said, "Hakamura here."
"Johnson here, what's going on?" came the response. "The captain is impatient."
"Right now we're dealing with some crackpot that doesn't want to leave."
"But the vehicle has left... and you're not in it."
"It's either storm his shed, or draw him out. He's already fired the first shot, after stripping officer Dunning of his sidearm and shooting me in the chest with it."
"Are you okay?" Johnson asked.
"Yes. Those forcefield belts really do work."
"Do you need assistance?"
"No, I can handle this."
"Just remember that Governor Whitmore has issued a ministerial decree creating the evacuated zone. Your friend down there has to leave."
"Legal niceties don't seem to work with him."
"Then do what you must. Governor Whitmore will not allow the operation until all the people are cleared out of the evacuation zone."
"Understood. I think he's moving now."
"Very well, Johnson out."
Wica opened the door to his property slightly, exposing only a sliver of his face. What was worse was that Hakamura realized he was looking right at him. Wica shouted out, "Your conversation was foolish, lieutenant. I heard every word. Governor Whitmore has no authority to create and enforce an evacuated zone. This is and remains a free world."
"All freedoms come with responsibilities, and one of those responsibilities is to give in to lawful authority in a situation like this, when a slight and temporary infringement of freedoms is necessary to save lives."
"I don't believe your nonsense. You can't make me leave my house."
Hakamura crouched down. He had hoped that in so doing, Wica would come out of the shed and approach. However, as he looked down, he scanned the building again, and found something that might be of use. "I believe I can," he finally said.
"What?"
"To your right and behind you, about four metres in one direction and two and a half in a perpendicular direction, is a five-litre container of cooking oil. If I ignite that."
"Impossible."
"No, this phaser can bore through your walls and ignite the cooking oil. Do you want a demonstration?"
Wica thought about it for the longest time, and then asked, "Would you do that?"
"Yes."
Once more, Wica hesitated. Hakamura thought that he must be weighing the loss of his building against the fact that he would only have to abandon it for a short period of time. Hakamura knew which way he would go.
"I gather I can't keep the weapon?"
"No."
"Very well, but if I find that my property has been violated, I'll hold you personally responsible."
"Understood."
Finally, the door opened, and the disheveled and even stooped old man walked out. He dropped the civilian-issue phaser and the phase rifle and walked in the opposite direction, holding his hands up and behind his head in the typical pose of the surrendering. Hakamura came out of his hiding place, wondering how he could fully handle-or even explain-this one.
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.
