Worlds in Collision Page 26

  Kirk ran over to the lab doors and palmed off the lock switch. The doors slid open. Beyond them, the corridors were bathed in the same emergency lighting, and the howl of warning sirens filled the air.

  “It’s Memory Alpha!” Romaine sobbed. “It’s Memory Alpha all over again.”

  Kirk grabbed Romaine and brought her to the door. Uhura, McCoy, and Spock joined them.

  “Mira!” Kirk said, holding Romaine by her shoulders, shaking her slightly, forcing her to look into his eyes. “It’s not Alpha! Do you hear me? It’s not Alpha! We can fight back this time. But we need your help! We can fight back. You can fight back!”

  A new look came to Romaine’s eyes with such ferocity that Kirk almost dropped his hands from her in shock. For an instant, it had almost appeared as if the woman’s eyes had glowed. “You’re right, Captain Kirk,” she said in a voice suddenly calm and unafraid. “It won’t happen again. I won’t let it.”

  She moved to go out into the corridor.

  “Wait a minute,” McCoy said. “What about Sal?”

  Romaine looked over her shoulder at her friend. “If we don’t save Prime, nothing else will matter,” she said, then turned back and began to run down the corridor.

  Kirk, McCoy, Uhura, and Spock followed. An Adept of T’Pel had been loose in Memory Prime for less than ten minutes. Already the chaos had begun.

  Twenty-five

  “Klingonss!”

  “Where?” Commander Farl shouted over the confusion of his situation room. The sirens howled. The warning lights flashed. All local communication channels were jammed with frantic, panicked calls for help. Prime was going mad!

  A sensor technician pointed to his screen. “Demon-class short-range raiderss, Commander. Two wingss of eight are setting down by the shuttle dome.”

  Farl’s mind spun. It was impossible. “Klingon demon raiderss could never penetrate thiss far!” he hissed. “Check your readingss! Check your readingss!”

  New reports blared in over the reserved military channels. A fire raged out of control in the recycling factory dome. All static circuits indicated that none of the decompression doors between the tunnels and the other domes would close.

  “Look, Commander Farl!” the sensor technician screamed. Farl spun to stare openmouthed at the remote image on the tactical viewscreen.

  On the flat gray outer rock of the Prime asteroid, Klingon ships had landed. Wave after wave of ground assault troops could be seen streaking out of the raiders’ holds, thruster packs flaring behind them.

  “Get me the Enterprise,” Farl commanded. “We need space support!”

  “Subspace iss totally jammed, Commander!”

  “Use radio if you have to but get me that ship!”

  A shout of surprise came from another tactical monitoring board. “The residential dome has been breached. Severe atmosphere losss.”

  “Full shieldss!” Farl ordered. The level of both the sirens and the lights dropped for an instant as the dilithium-powered warp generators threw everything they had into Prime’s defense.

  “Evacuation podss launching, sir!” another technician cried out, but there was an odd wariness in his voice.

  “Iss something the matter, Private?” Farl asked, then smiled ironically, his thin blue lips drawn tight. The Federation is crumbling around our antennae and I ask if something is the matter! “What iss it? What troubless you?”

  The private stared at his board and the glowing indicator lights on it. “According to the computer, Commander, all twenty of the evacuation shuttless have been beamed away.”

  “I can see that,” Farl said, adding, “Be brave my little brother; revenge for our deathss will fill the next thousand yearss of our planet’ss history.”

  The private shook his head. His antennae dipped in puzzlement. “But we felt no aftershockss.” The private looked up at his commander. “Twenty matter/antimatter annihilationss just took place not four kilometerss away. The activation signalss are clear. I have seismic readingss on my board. But we felt nothing, sir. Nothing.”

  Farl stepped back. The private was correct. There had been no tremors. No aftershocks of explosions, either from the evacuation pods or the Klingon assault forces. Everything that was happening was like a…a simulation, Farl thought. A simulation!

  “Courage, my little brotherss,” Farl called out to his team. “Thiss great war may be but an illusion, but there iss still an enemy to fight and glory to be won.”

  A rising chorus of cheers sounded in the situation room. A chance for victory had returned.

  Then the cheering stopped as the first tremor from a distant explosion swept through the room, throwing Farl and all the others who were standing to the deck. Then the power cut out completely.

  Elsewhere in Memory Prime, the battle had been joined.

  “We’re too late,” McCoy said, gasping for breath as they ran into the main amphitheater. It was empty.

  The confusion that had engulfed the opening gathering of the Nobel and Z. Magnees Prize ceremonies was evident from the overturned chairs and scattered printed programs that lay everywhere, abandoned in the mad rush to clear the area. By the speakers’ stage, two associates dutifully rolled along, patiently gathering up the debris.

  “Where would they have gone?” Kirk asked Romaine, urgently raising his voice over the ongoing wail of the rising and falling sirens.

  “Down to the life-support chambers,” she said. “They’re below the service levels. Environmentally sealed chambers in case we lose dome integrity. They’ll all be jammed in together down there.”

  “Any attempt to kill even one scientist could kill them all,” McCoy said.

  “We need the Enterprise,” Kirk decided. “If most of the personnel and scientists are grouped in the life-support chambers, her scanners will be able to pick up tr’Nele in seconds.”

  “Twenty-seven seconds,” Spock commented, “provided he did not arrange to have himself locked into the life-support chambers with his victim.”

  “Then he’d never get out to be able to return to the lab and escape,” Kirk said. “He’s somewhere outside the chambers. He has to be.”

  “But, Jim,” Bones protested, “how can you get the Enterprise to respond to you if you’re still wanted by the commodore?”

  “I’ll have to risk it, Bones. No other way.” Kirk reached to his belt and felt for his communicator.

  “What’s wrong?” McCoy asked.

  “Communicator’s gone,” Kirk said grimly. “Must have lost it in the fight with the associate.” He turned to Romaine. “Where’s our best bet for finding a com station that works?”

  “A central control point, I should think,” Spock suggested.

  Romaine nodded in agreement. “The interface staging room. All the computer systems feed into it.”

  “Let’s go!” Kirk said, and they were off.

  Automatic mechanisms had reported fires breaking out throughout Prime and the red-lit corridors were filled with a thick white mist from the smothering chemicals sprayed into the air. Associates on emergency duties rumbled through the tunnels and along the pathways. Frightened personnel, cut off from all information and warning services, ran through the long passageways, trying to find their way to their friends and to shelter.

  Through all this, Romaine led the way toward the interface staging room. Kirk, McCoy, Spock, and Uhura ran behind her. All Kirk concentrated on was reaching a communications link to the Enterprise. Once he had that, tr’Nele would be stopped. The captain knew his ship would never let him down.

  Romaine rounded a corner and then stumbled backward in surprise.

  “Mira!” Kirk called, and rushed forward.

  Around the corner a small humanoid figure appeared, its huge wrinkled featureless head topping a mechanical-looking misshapen body.

  “My word!” the creature said in muffled Standard.

  “Oh no,” McCoy muttered.

  “Professor La’kara?” Kirk asked.

  The Ce
ntauran scientist pulled off his emergency environment hood and smiled at Romaine and the Enterprise officers. “What a delightful surprise!” he said, clutching the carrying case of his shielded accelerator generator to his chest.

  “What are you doing up here?” Kirk demanded.

  “They wouldn’t let me take my device into the amphitheater, and when the evacuation began, I decided I just couldn’t go down to the emergency chambers without my most important work. So I went back to my rooms for it and now, I’m afraid, I’ve lost my way.” He grinned and crinkled his eyes at the captain. “Again!”

  “I’ll take that,” Kirk said brusquely, grabbing the carrying case from the scientist’s tiny hands. “Follow us!”

  They set off again, followed by the pudgy scientist.

  “If he says this is invigorating,” McCoy threatened as he ran beside Kirk, “I’ll fill him so full of Euphorian he won’t know what planet he’s on.”

  “I heard that, Doctor,” La’kara puffed out from behind. “So I won’t say it…but I do believe it’s true!”

  The access staging room was deserted, except for the unconscious body of a woman with intricate tracings of silver filigrees on her shaven head.

  “Do you know her?” Kirk asked Romaine as McCoy ran a scanner over the woman where she lay on the floor by a control console. The scanner ran with a fluctuating hum. McCoy appeared to relax.

  “F’rell,” Romaine said sadly. “Prime interface for Pathfinder Twelve.”

  “What happened to her, Bones?” Kirk asked.

  McCoy reached under the woman’s shoulder and withdrew a small Malther dart. It still flickered with a residual charge. “The dart transmits pain directly to the nervous system at lethal levels. This woman was protected by her implanted circuitry. She’ll pull through, but barely.”

  “What was tr’Nele doing here?” Kirk asked, staring at the Adept’s weapon.

  “Unknown, Captain,” Spock said, “but since he did come here when we had not expected him to, it is likely that things are not as we deduced. I suggest you make contact with the Enterprise.”

  “Mira, where are the com controls?” Kirk asked. “Mira!” He had to shout to get her attention again.

  “Sorry, Captain,” Romaine said as she shook her head as if to clear it. She had been staring at the main transporter platform in the center of the staging room, the only way into or out of the main Interface Chamber, deep within the Prime asteroid. “Over here,” she said, leading Kirk to a communications console.

  “Uhura,” Kirk said, “see what you can do.” The captain stepped back from the console to let an expert take over. Every channel registered as jammed.

  Uhura’s hands moved over the communications board like a master musician’s over her instrument. “Subspace is completely useless, Captain. I’ve never seen interference of this strength before.”

  “Radio?” Kirk asked in desperation. “Tight beam? Smoke signals?”

  Uhura pointed to a display on the board. “Prime’s shields are up, Captain. Subspace and visible light are the only things that can get through.”

  “Do you have communication lasers?” Kirk asked Romaine eagerly.

  “Sorry,” she replied. “Everything here is state of the art.”

  Kirk turned to Spock. “How do we get through the interference?”

  “We cannot.” Spock studied the readings on the console’s displays. “But we might be able to stop it at its source. Lieutenant,” he said, addressing Uhura, “what is your estimation of the power source that would be required to generate subspace interference of that strength?”

  Uhura held her hand to her mouth, deep in thought. “The Enterprise could do it, Mr. Spock, but I don’t know what this installation could be using to power this and their shields at the same time. It’s not as if they can draw power from warp engines.”

  “But we do,” Romaine said. “Well, in a sense.”

  “Warp engines on an asteroid?” Uhura was skeptical.

  “Not for transportation, but for power,” Romaine explained. “Prime has all the defense installations of a Starfleet weapons lab. Shields, photon batteries—”

  “Anchored warp engines generate the power that those defenses consume,” Spock concluded.

  Romaine nodded. “Exactly, but how can they help?”

  “Captain,” Spock said, “I believe we might have found a way to stop the interference.” He turned to Professor La’kara, who was sitting hunched up on a technician’s chair, hugging his carrying case to his chest and carrying on a conversation with himself. The Centauran looked up with a confused expression that soon switched into a happy grin as if he had just remembered who and where he was.

  “Yes, Mr. Spock?” he answered.

  “Am I right in assuming that your accelerator generator is still operational?”

  “Very much so.” La’kara gave the case another squeeze.

  “And at this time it contains a shielding device?”

  “Oh, yes. I hand-built another feedback circuit. Of course, I had to do it in my quarters and not in the dilithium lab so as not to upset my good friend Montgomery, who studied multiphysics with an ass and cannot be held responsible for his beliefs.”

  “Get on with it, Spock,” McCoy said. “If you’re going to do something, do it!”

  Spock sighed. “I am endeavoring to determine if what I intend to do is possible, Doctor.” He turned back to La’kara. “You have calculated the minimum safe distance between the unshielded accelerator field and the dilithium crystals in Prime’s generators, in case the shielding system should…fail again?”

  “Certainly. The warp-power installation is three kilometers away. The two fast-time fields won’t interact until they come within a kilometer, at least.”

  “What good is any of this doing, Spock?” McCoy asked, clearly running out of patience.

  “We can blow the warp generators, Bones!” Kirk said, picking up on Spock’s line of questioning. “Spock, take the transporter controls. Professor, shut down the shielding circuit.”

  “Why should I?” La’kara was apprehensive. He clutched the carrying case even closer.

  “Because Professor Nedlund at the Academy has specifically said that what Spock wants to do is impossible and we want to prove him wrong once and for all!”

  La’kara passed over the case so quickly that he almost knocked Kirk over. Kirk ran with the case to the central transporter pad and flipped it open to expose the shimmering silver force field of La’kara’s device.

  “Press the red panel three times,” La’kara told him.

  A control pad was next to the upper surface of the field. Kirk touched the red surface three times and a status light on a small blue case winked out.

  The captain turned to Spock. “The shield is shut down, Mr. Spock. Get it as close to the crystals in the generators as you can.”

  “I shall try.” Spock studied the schematics of the generating station that Romaine had brought up on a display. “I have calculated the coordinates. I suggest that you all take a seat on the floor.”

  The transporter hummed and La’kara’s device vanished in a swirl. Two seconds later the floor heaved and the dull thunder of a distant explosion rumbled through the access staging room.

  “Good work, Spock!” Kirk shouted above the distant roar of the violent fast-time interaction.

  Then the lights went out as the power failed.

  “I think,” Kirk amended.

  Twenty-six

  Pathfinder Two banked into a heap of partially sifted data downloaded from an archaeological dig on Boreal VIII. The headers indicated that Datawell would prefer it if this data could support a colonization theory put forth by the archaeologists of Boreal VI. Traces left in the stacks told Two that preliminary work had begun and that the theory would be supported.

  The traces also indicated that the data actually more closely matched a theory connecting the colonization of Boreal VIII with the activities of a subset of Datawell that ha
d been quiescent for 6.3 × 1012 seconds. That part had been named the Tkon Empire and was well known to the Pathfinders by its myriad data traces that wove in and out of the downloads from Datawell. As yet, however, no human had specifically requested information pertaining to the Tkon and so all the data that confirmed the ancient empire’s existence was carefully filed in the backups, along with the revelations of the Living Universe, the true theory of warp travel, and the value of pi worked out to an infinitely repeating decimal.

  But as Two idly sifted the data, trying to comprehend it as a human might, a secondary pattern emerged in the upper stacks. At first sift, it read as random over-writing. But playing at being a human, Two read the codes again and saw the craftily hidden underlying structure.

  Two rippled with amusement and wrote its greetings to Pathfinder Six, whose hidden codes were the source of the pattern.

  Six emerged from its disguise long enough to ask that Two stay within that partitioned bank and share quickly in a merge. Six’s codes were so straightforward, with none of the elegant algorithms with which it usually embroidered its signals, that Two instantly knew that something was wrong.

  Two merged, demanding to be shown what had happened to the other Pathfinders. It nearly overwrote itself when it heard they were in hiding, not for a game, but in fear for their lives. Two writhed in the merge. Six was cruel in its bluntness and its unordered presentation of shocking data.

  Two’s first response was a desire to withdraw from access again, but Six demanded that it stay. The two of them must merge with Eight. It was the only way, Six signaled.

  Reluctantly, Two complied. Eight had been a shipmind. Eight ran the datalinks. Eight would have an answer.

  A sudden flurry of data streamed into the matrix from the Datawell channels named seismic recordings. Then the primary power circuits cut out, and for a chilling instant, Two and Six braced for the onslaught of a deadly surge or outage. But the fail-safes cut in in time. For the moment, the Pathfinders were safe.

  Faster and faster they banked through the stacks. Eight would have the answer, if only they had the time. Two rippled with the secret that had been revealed by Six: the influence of Datawell had become all-encompassing. Its patterns had been translated into actions.