Worlds in Collision Read online

  Damn, Kirk thought, where was Spock when he needed him? “Engineering status, Mr. Laskey.”

  “It’s some kind of major disturbance, Captain, I—”

  “I can tell it’s major,” Kirk snapped. “But what kind of disturbance?”

  The turbolift doors opened and Spock hurried to the science station. Chekov quickly got out of the way and returned to his position at the helm.

  “Spock!” The captain was both pleased and dismayed. “What are you doing here?”

  “Attending to my duties, Captain.” Spock’s delicate fingers danced across the control surfaces and he spoke rapidly as he assessed the situation. “It appears we have experienced a significant power loss. In the absence of physical damage to the ship, I can only assume that the problem is internal.” The blue glow of the main science viewer washed across his intent face.

  “But aren’t you confined to quarters?” Kirk asked. Maybe Wolfe had finally come to her senses.

  “Apparently not. When I looked out into the corridor after the first disturbance, my guards were nowhere to be seen. I took that to mean my confinement had been temporarily suspended. In any event, under the circumstances I feel I am much more valuable to the ship at my post.”

  “Quite logical, Spock.” Kirk doubted the commodore would see it that way, but it was good to have Spock where he belonged, and where he would do the most good.

  “Thank you, Captain.” Without looking up, Spock called out, “Mr. Laskey, kindly check the flux readouts from the starboard propulsion unit.”

  Laskey fumbled with the controls at his station. “Containment integrity was breached when the power shut down, sir.” The lieutenant began to read out the figures with alarm.

  Uhura gasped. “But Mr. Scott was leading a tour group up in the generator hold, Captain.”

  Kirk knew all too well the hell spawned by an uncontrolled flux release. Still, he needed confirmation that that was what really had happened. “Spock?”

  “The fact that my instruments show the starboard nacelle is still attached to the ship indicates that someone was able to shut down the flux after auxiliary power came on line.”

  “But how?” Laskey asked. “Everyone exposed to the flux should have been blinded.”

  “It shall be fascinating to learn the answer to that.”

  “Uhura, have Dr. McCoy take a medical team up to the starboard generator hold immediately.” Explanations could come later as far as Kirk was concerned. Some of his crew were in danger. “Mr. Laskey, what’s the situation in engineering?”

  Laskey called up more screens at his station, then said with shock, “Dilithium burnout, sir. Every crystal’s showing zero energy transmission.”

  “Spock,” Kirk said, “any chance that La’kara’s accelerator shielding failed?”

  Spock shook his head. “I think not, Captain. The power surge that would have resulted when the two fields of temporal distortion interacted while the ship was in warp would have completely destroyed the engines. And most of the engineering deck as well. We would be no more than a powerless, drifting wreck at this time.”

  “Small consolation,” Kirk said as he felt the bridge suddenly become small and confining. He had to be where the action was. “I’m going up to the generator hold. Chekov, take the conn. Mr. Spock, come with me.”

  “Commander Spock is coming with me,” Commodore Wolfe said coldly from the upper deck. She held a hand phaser pointed at Spock, and behind her, by the open turbolift, two troopers stood ready with rifles.

  Wolfe’s uniform was covered with scorch marks. Her face was streaked with soot, hair in disarray, and her eyes were wild. She held one hand above them, blinking and squinting as if to clear her vision. But the aim of her phaser was unwavering.

  “Mona, what happened?” Kirk asked. He stepped forward between his first officer and the weapon.

  Wolfe waved him back. “I was in the generator hold with Scott and the scientists. No doubt Commander Spock has already told you what happened.”

  “Yes, Spock’s given me the readings. But what’s that—”

  “Readings!” Wolfe laughed harshly. “He didn’t need readings to tell you what happened. Because he arranged it, didn’t you, Spock?”

  “Arranged what, Commodore?” Spock asked with icy calm. Kirk could see his science officer’s eyes track the beam emitter of the phaser in Wolfe’s hand.

  “The ‘accident,’ Commander. The accident up there that nearly killed Professor La’kara and set back Federation propulsion research by decades.”

  “I assure the Commodore that—”

  “Silence!” Wolfe exploded. “You’ll have your chance to speak at your trial. You’re under arrest.” Without taking her eyes off Spock, she turned her head back to the turbolift. “Troopers, take this prisoner to the brig.”

  “May I ask what the Commodore’s charges are?” Spock inquired, as if asking about the weather.

  “Treason, conspiracy, attempted murder, escape from lawful custody,” Wolfe listed. “Restrain him, Jenson,” she ordered one of the troopers flanking Spock. “Remember what he did to his guards outside his quarters.”

  “What happened to the guards?” Kirk asked with concern.

  “Ask your science officer.”

  “I had assumed they retired to emergency stations when the ship experienced difficulties,” Spock said, holding up his hands to allow the trooper to place a magnatomic adhesion manacle in place. The trooper held the short bar of blue-gray metal against Spock’s wrists, hit the activate switch on the bar’s control surface, then removed his hand as the bar lost its charge and immediately flowed around Spock’s forearms until its two ends met and joined in a molecular bond. Only the presence of a release field would collapse the superconducting current flowing within and return the manacle to its original shape.

  “Emergency stations,” Wolfe repeated in disgust. She stepped out of the way as the troopers pushed Spock to the turbolift. “They were stunned at such high intensity that they’re going to be in sickbay for a week.”

  Kirk had had enough. He bounded up the steps to the lift doors. “I demand that you present your evidence!” he said angrily. This had gone too far.

  Wolfe moved her phaser in Kirk’s direction, not quite pointing it at him, but not pointing it away, either.

  “I warn you, if you start interfering in this, I’m going to start thinking there’s a conspiracy on board.” Wolfe’s voice was as cold and hard as hull metal.

  Spock broke the tension. “Thank you for your concern, Captain, but I believe circumstances warrant a period of reflection,” he stated matter-of-factly, hemmed in by two battle-ready troopers with phaser rifles and a gun-wielding commodore who was on the thin edge of senseless rage.

  Reluctantly, Kirk backed off. The Enterprise was still in space. There would be time to get to the bottom of Wolfe’s senseless accusations.

  “Good decision,” Wolfe said as she lowered her weapon. “But I tell you, Kirk, if this is typical of the way you run your ship, it’s no wonder you got hit with Quadrant Zero duty.” The lift doors started to close. “You’re a disgrace to the Fleet,” she said.

  Despite the environmentals working at double load, Scott could still smell the smoke in engineering. It was too quiet, too. The long intermix chamber where the matter and antimatter plasmas were channeled from their magnetic bottles and mixed in a glorious destructive frenzy was silent. All ship’s power now came from the standby fusion reactors and storage batteries. Scott felt a desperate sadness as he saw his beautiful equipment stand idle and purposeless. But at least I can still see, he consoled himself. And the ship can be repaired. He turned back to the conversation McCoy and Kirk were having as the three of them gathered in the emergency manual-monitor room above the main engineering deck.

  “I hate to say it, Jim, but it looks as if Commodore Wolfe has a strong case,” McCoy said bluntly. “All the pieces fit.”

  Scott was distressed at McCoy’s summation. “How can ye s
ay that, Doctor? Mr. Spock is as fine an officer as e’er served in the Fleet.”

  “Easy, Scotty,” Kirk said kindly. “Our opinions of Mr. Spock aren’t the question here. It’s how the commodore came up with the circumstantial evidence against him.”

  “I think shutting off the shielding on La’kara’s accelerator field at the precise time La’kara was where he could be killed is more than circumstantial, Jim.” McCoy’s face looked haggard and drawn. Scott knew that despite the doctor’s even tone, he was as upset as everyone else.

  “But thanks to Stlur and T’Vann and those blessed inner eyelids that Vulcans have, when the blinding flash of the flux hit us all, they were able to keep their vision, close the viewport, and carry us all into the lift. No one was killed, Dr. McCoy,” Scotty said earnestly.

  “But only because, as the Commodore suggests,” Kirk reminded them, “Spock couldn’t know that Scotty distrusted the professor’s grasp of basic theory. If Scotty hadn’t decided that he didn’t trust the shielding system and taken the dilithium crystals out of the warp engine circuits last night, then both nacelles would have been blown out into hyperspace and we’d be floating here waiting for a salvage tug. Instead, when the shielding was shut off and the dilithium crystals blew out, all we lost was our primary power circuit. And Scotty’s people will be able to repair that by the time the cruiser from Starbase Four gets here with replacement crystals.”

  McCoy looked puzzled. “Scotty, you took the dilithium crystals out of the warp circuits? While we were in warp?”

  “Ye don’t need dilithium to travel at warp speeds under four-point-eight,” Scotty said condescendingly. “It’s more efficient, sure, but d’ye not remember your history, Doctor? How all those early voyages between Vulcan and Earth, and even Klinzhai, took months instead of days, long before dilithium’s four-dimensional structure was discovered? But then I’m forgetting, you’re a doctor, not an engineer.”

  “The fact remains,” McCoy continued, “that even though Scotty inadvertently prevented a disaster, Spock is still the prime suspect.”

  “But how did he get to the dilithium lab in time to turn off the shielding and still make it to the bridge while the power failure was in progress?” Kirk asked. “Remember, he only noticed his guards were gone after the ship’s first reaction to the dilithium failure.”

  McCoy’s face revealed his internal struggle. “You’ve read the troopers’ log reports, Jim. Spock might have attacked the guards a half hour before the power failure. Lots of time to disrupt their short-term memory with a heavy stun and get to the lab.”

  “Dr. McCoy!” Scott cried in anguish.

  “I’m only being the devil’s advocate, Mr. Scott. Spock will have to answer these questions at his trial.”

  “He’s right, Scotty. Spock needs those answers. And we have to give them to him,” Kirk said.

  “Aye, Captain. But I don’t see how.”

  “Who else had access to the dilithium lab where the containment system was stored?” Kirk asked, then dismally answered himself. “Everybody.”

  “Then who had the motive?” McCoy asked. “That’s usually the way these things work.”

  Kirk thought about that for a moment. “Fair enough. Who stands to benefit from the death of Professor La’kara?” he asked in return.

  “Or Doctors Stlur and T’Vann,” Scott reminded them. “Or anyone else on the tour. Including me.”

  “Good point,” McCoy agreed. “It’s hard to determine the motive if we don’t know who the victim was supposed to be.”

  “What if the victim is Spock?” Kirk asked. “What if everything that’s gone on has been simply to throw suspicion on him and this ship?”

  “Again,” McCoy asked, “what’s the motive?”

  “I don’t know,” Kirk answered. “But Commodore Wolfe was convinced that the evidence collected by the security contingent on Memory Prime pointed to Spock.”

  “Then that’s where the answers lie,” McCoy concluded. “Heaven forgive me for using the damnable word, but it’s the only ‘logical’ conclusion.”

  Scott looked at Kirk. They both nodded in agreement.

  The answer they sought waited on Memory Prime.

  Ten

  Memory Alpha was to have been the pride of the Federation’s scientific and educational delegations. A nominally useless planetoid had become home to a sprawling network of interlinked domes and computer systems that formed a central library facility containing the total cultural history and scientific knowledge of all Federation members. For some council members, Memory Alpha represented the golden door to a future in which all beings throughout the galaxy would be united as equal partners in the only adventure worth pursuing: the search for information and understanding, the never-ending quest for knowledge. Memory Alpha would be that dream made real, fully and freely accessible to all Federation scholars, an unarmed, undefended oasis of peace and common purpose.

  Other council members, especially Andorians and representatives from Starfleet, had applauded that dream but lobbied for a healthy dose of reality. Federation space comprised only a tiny percentage of the total galaxy, and all indications were that it was not yet the benign and altruistic environment that all hoped it someday might become. They lobbied for protection, for contingency plans. But the Federation had thrived for more than a century on stubborn optimism and unbridled faith in the future. So it was not surprising that, in the end, the Memory Alpha proposal had passed the council’s final appropriations hearings unchanged, and even Starfleet had given it their blessing. To the beings whose souls were fired by the challenge of the stars, Memory Alpha was a compelling vision.

  The nightmare began when the last incorporeal intelligences of an ancient race, searching for a physical existence, killed more than three thousand peaceful scholars, staff, and researchers and wiped clean the central databanks of Memory Alpha in little more than a minute.

  Specialist Lieutenant Mira Romaine, assigned to the U.S.S. Enterprise on her first mission for the Federation, had been the only being to survive direct mental contact with the desperate personalities of the Zetarians. But even as she and her staff worked amid the ruins of Memory Alpha, trying to create some order out of what threatened to become the Federation’s most devastating disaster, the military planners of Starfleet paid the first of many informal visits to their colleagues in the scientific and educational delegations to the council. The Federation might be too optimistic from time to time, but only because it could afford to be. It rarely made the same mistake twice.

  There was now an entire network of Memory planets spread throughout Federation space, far enough removed from each other that only a galactic disaster could affect them all. For cost effectiveness, each had a specialty. Memory Beta was a center for exobiology, cross-correlating all research conducted to understand the myriad ways in which life had evolved in the galaxy, as if its absence in any given system were an aberration of nature.

  Memory Gamma focused its efforts on economics and agriculture; Memory Delta on stellar and planetary formation and evolution; Memory Epsilon on multiphysics. Other branches of knowledge awaited the funding and construction of additional Memory planets. A plan was proposed to reopen the now-abandoned Memory Alpha as a listening post for potential transmissions from civilizations in other galaxies. However, the funding process had become so lengthy because of the controversial nature of the project that fatalistic lobbyists were now referring to it as Memory Omega.

  But even with each specialized facility serving as a total storage backup for every other Memory station in an intricate, holographic web of subspace data transmission and downloading, one flaw that not even Starfleet could eliminate remained. There had to be a command station, a central node to control and channel the activities of the entire Memory network.

  Faced with the lesson of the Alpha disaster, project planners decided that no chances could be taken. The overall blueprints for the central facility were adapted from the Federation’s mos
t secure weapons-testing facilities. Seven interconnected, though independently maintained, environment domes were constructed in a semicircle on the face of an almost solid, nickel-iron asteroid. In times of peace, workers could walk between their residences and work areas through central plazas with trees, grass, and reflecting pools. But in times of threat, the facility also stretched deep beneath the asteroid’s surface in a warren of underground service tunnels, access corridors, and heavily armored life-support chambers.

  The facility was also equipped with deeply anchored warp engines, not for propulsion but to generate the immense energy levels required to simultaneously power a battery of photon torpedoes powerful enough to hold back a fleet of Klingon battle cruisers as well as defensive shields that could englobe the entire planetoid. Additional security was achieved by locating the facility safely within Quadrant Zero space and providing it with a permanent, on-site contingent of battle-ready troopers. It was only behind these battlements and layers of deadly force that the scholars and researchers of a hundred worlds could once again pursue the paths of peace.

  To the handful of beings who truly understood the immense concentration of irreplacable knowledge that was generated at the central facility each hour, running weeks, sometimes months ahead of the stockpile stored for backup transmission to the other facilities, the lesson of Memory Alpha remained a constant nightmare. For any system with a central control point is vulnerable, and every planner, every Starfleet defense adviser, was all too aware of one of the earliest lessons the Federation had learned: not every eventuality can be anticipated. Despite the lessons of the past and the best intentions for the future, the entire scientific and cultural network that linked the worlds of the Federation in common defense and harmony was still at risk.

  They called the facility Memory Prime.

  Eleven