Текст книги "Sword of Damocles "

Автор книги: Geoffrey Thorne

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

  It was a good time, the perfect expression of their collective raison d’кtre.

  Which, of course, meant it couldn’t last.

  The day began badly for him: a fitful sleep full of powerful and unsettling dreams, followed by a return to consciousness that put him in mind of the time he’d escaped drowning.

  Caught in a river whose current he had misjudged, he found himself both falling and being swept forward by the pull of something he could neither see nor fight. It had been terrifying then and, even though his father had pulled him out only a few seconds after he’d tumbled from the boat, his time in the water had felt like eternity.

  The dream, what he could remember of it, wasn’t truly terrifying in that way. There was no risk of death, obviously, and he wasn’t drenched or shivering cold. Yet there was the same power in the thing, the same inexorable pull from something invisible and powerful and impossible to touch.

  There had been new elements this time, he thought-a flash of vegetation he hadn’t noticed in previous bouts, the sound of a female voice screaming his name, something about a crash.

  Once a strange and even mystical experience for him, especially the first few times, the dream had mostly become little more than an occasional and occasionally unpleasant puzzle, cut into billions of obscure pieces of which he only had access to portions at a time.

  He would solve it one day, he knew. In fact he knew considerably more about the puzzle and its solution than he usually admitted even to himself. But one daywas not today.

  And, of course, the dream was also a kind of promise, one he’d tested over time and found to be true.

  He’d been here before and would come again he knew, but each time he returned from the dream, whether he remembered every detail or not, he was forced to take moments to remind himself who he was, where he was and that, so far at least, he was still alive.

  One day that would not be true. One day there would be no waking and no reassurances. One day the dream would not be a dream.

  But that day was also not today.

  It wasn’t until after he’d stumbled to the wash basin and splashed cool water on his face (sonic showers would never do for something like this) that he felt almost like himself again. Almost, but not quite. The dream, even the sparse fragments of it that he could usually remember, was always unsettling in a way that he had yet to find words to describe.

  Looking in the mirror he studied the details of his face and found them just very slightly alien. The eyes were the right color gray; the ridges across his nose were properly deep and defined; his skin was the same brown and the few flecks of gray that had begun to appear in the black of his hair had not multiplied, and yet there was something unrecognizable about the man staring back at him. It was as if he was looking into the face of some acquaintance, a colleague he might see occasionally in passing or a classmate from long ago. Not quite a stranger but not a face he found entirely familiar.

  “You’re Najem,” he told himself. “You’re Jaza Najem.”

  The computer told him that he was about an hour ahead of his duty shift; his subordinates would wonder why he had shown up so early and perhaps consider it a negative mark against their own abilities. So he decided to dress, get a snack, and take a short walk before heading up.

  The galley wasn’t quite empty when he arrived. Little clusters of chatting people had gathered at a few of the tables, while others had chosen quiet solitude in the hall’s more secluded corners.

  “Greetings, Mr. Jaza,” said Chordys, the Bolian who ran the place from the closing hours of gamma shift through most of alpha. She was a cheery little thing whose round blue body seemed to be little more than life support for her smile. “You’re up early. Getting a jump on the day?”

  He managed a smile of his own, nowhere near as bright, mumbled something that she pretended was coherent as he pointed to the pitcher of protolact on the shelf behind her.

  “Upset stomach?” she intuited. He nodded. It was close enough to how he felt though not truly accurate. Upset soul, perhaps? What was the cure for that?

  “Dr. Ree usually comes along in the next half an hour or so,” said Chordys, going on without him. “He’s on the coldblood cycle, you know. Only up during the ‘day.’ You can probably catch a word with him before his shift begins.”

  “No,” said Jaza, as she reached for the jar of blue liquid. “It’s just bad sleep. I’ll be fine in a few minutes.”

  She beamed back at him good-naturedly and handed off the protolact. He drank as he walked, taking swigs between steps and feeling progressively more like himself. He decided to swing by the forward observation area and collect his thoughts there before going up to the pod.

  The odd clusters of darklings did obscure most of normal space, making Occultus Ora an almost totally black void, but, sometimes, the light from a nearby star could cut through.

  As much as he loved plumbing the secrets of this region-just thinking of it sent a thrill through him-it was nice to see the stars from time to time. It settled his mind to see them out there, perhaps not as eternal as they had seemed to him as a child but permanent enough for all practical purposes. As much as he loved pushing the edges, there was something to be said for that stability, even if it was only an illusion supported by his limited perceptions.

  Bajor was out there somewhere, far beyond the range of even Titan’s sensors. It was strange how little he actually thought of home these days. There was always so much to see and do that the day-to-day life of Bajor, how his father was, what his children were up to, only floated like buoys on the vast surface of his mind.

  Somehow, whenever the dream resurfaced, his mind swam home as fast as it could. It wasn’t really homesickness, he had reasons for not spending too much time there, but whenever the dream recurred, there was always that strange hollow ache afterward.

  He made a mental note to record a message to his family as soon as this business with Occultus Ora was complete.

   Hello to all. Yes, we’re all still fine out here. Still alive. Only a few more years to go…

  The message would take weeks to arrive and be necessarily brief but they expected that from him by now. He’d never been good at verbally expressing the amazing things he’d witnessed in his travels and so had forced himself to become adept at holography. The actual image of a dying pulsar spoke it with far more eloquence than any words he might put around it. Of course, there would be no pictures of Occultus Ora, none that a lay person would find interesting at any rate. Only black, black, black.

  Still, on this occasion, he would be forced to try to put it all into words and he would certainly have the time to do it. There was no way to get a signal out now. The darklings’ gravity wells and particle discharges made normal communications dicey at best.

  He tried to recall a few sonnets to go along with his descriptions of this place; perhaps a line or two from Erish Elo’s Flames of Darknesswould be apropos.

  The observation deck was even more devoid of people than the galley had been. With only two stars visible through the massive plexi wall the only available illumination came from the light strips that ran the length of the ceiling, kept intentionally dimmer than the norm to facilitate tranquility of thought. There was always a somber, contemplative feel to the place and that was precisely what he needed on mornings after the dream’s reappearance.

  Aside from himself only two other beings, two female ensigns, shared the space. They were both essentially humanoid. One was an Antaran, you could tell by the massive V-shaped cranial ridge dominating her forehead. The other was a member of some species he couldn’t readily identify. She was tallish, slender, longer of limb than the average human or Bajoran with a coating on her skin that glinted vaguely metallic in the low light.

  Her hair, a thicket of long, ropelike braids, extended to the small of her back, where it was held in a loose bunch by a single regulation blue band.

  They nodded professionally at his arrival but, when it was clear he meant to keep to himself, went back to their previous conversation, speaking in intentionally hushed tones so as not to be overheard.

  He did his best not to listen, he had no wish to intrude, but the unfortunate acoustics of the place made eavesdropping inevitable.

  There was something about a coworker being unreasonable, another about the unreliability of that person’s work and the general consensus that, were it not for their commander’s personal affection for the buffoon, he would spend the bulk of his on-duty time scrubbing plasma conduits. It soon became clear that the subject of their discussion had been romantically involved with the Antaran and now was very much not.

  Jaza smiled.

   Titanmight be home to the most diverse crew in Starfleet but there was surprisingly little variation when it came to mating rituals. People of every social and biological distinction generally managed to make a hash of love as often as not. He had long since learned the lesson that shipboard relationships were best kept casual and short in duration.

  Now this ensign, Loolooa he thought, remembering her name suddenly, was getting the news. She was young. She would likely be liasingwith someone new in the next few weeks. It was the nature of life on a starship.

  The other female said little during their exchange, confining most of her responses to semi-audible murmurs of agreement and support.

  He found her fascinating for some reason, despite the fact that her back was too him most of the time. Something about her, the contours of her shape, perhaps, or the way her hair bounced slightly with each of her nods, reminded her of his wife.

   She would have hated all this,he thought. All this quiet, painstaking creeping into the unknown quarters of the galaxy.Sumari could scarcely conceive of traveling offworld, much less the long-term deep exploration that now defined his life.

  “There’s too much on Bajor to work out,” she would always say. “Too much that needs doing here.”

  Of course those had been in their days in the resistance, in the time before her death.

  It had taken years for the thought of her to come to him as something other than a cold, serrated ache in his chest and years more for him to take any joy in his memories of her, but he had eventually learned to accept the loss of her as another stone on the path he was destined to walk.

  “And, anyway,” said Ensign Loolooa. “I much prefer your company to his.” She ran fingers softly along her companion’s cheek, eliciting a sharp exhalation from that quarter.

  The other female took Loolooa’s hand gently and leaned close enough to her that, at first, Jaza thought they might kiss. He was suddenly self-conscious at the turn of events and, not wishing to intrude on their privacy further, swallowed the last of his protolact and made for the exit.

  Only the other female did not kiss Loolooa. Instead, as he passed them on the way to the door, he saw her whispering something to her friend, directly into her aural cavity.

  Whatever she said caused Loolooa to draw back sharply and bolt from the room, unmindful of the superior officer occupying the space between her and the exit. She collided with him, even as he moved to get out of her way and sent the two of them sprawling to the floor.

  She was up instantly, terribly flustered and full of apologies for which he assured her there was no reason. When she had expressed enough contrition to satisfy her personal sense of decorum, she quickly exited the observation area.

  “I’m sorry about that, sir,” said the other ensign placidly. “Loo can be excitable.”

  “So I see,” said Jaza.

  “She’s,” the ensign seemed to be searching for the right word. “She requires companionship. I believe her people are not well suited for solitary life.”

  “I’m guessing yours are?” said Jaza, looking at her fully for the first time. She wasn’t wearing a metallic skin tint; her sheen seemed to be the natural look of her flesh. If not for her occasional movement and the size and contours of her eyes, she could have been the sculpture of a humanoid woman cast in copper or gold. Fascinating.

  “We are suited for many contingencies, sir,” she said. “But I am not suited for Loo.”

  It was the same old story and he didn’t press her for more details. In fact he felt a little odd standing there with her, especially as both of them had stopped talking and were just sort of lookingat each other.

  It was impossible to read her expression; her wide turquoise eyes were like glass marbles and, though beautiful in their way, did not have pupils or lids. She didn’t blink. He felt naked suddenly, scrutinized, and not a little bit panicked.

  “Well,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I am returning to duty now,” she said. “Sir.”

  “I’m starting my shift as well.”

  There was another moment of awkward silence before she finally departed. He stood there alone for the next few minutes, his heart beating thunder inside him. He had again that same strange sensation of invisible hands taking hold of him and pulling that he’d felt from the dream-the same sense of being drawn inexorably down.

  For a second, he thought of chasing after her and asking if she had in fact intentionally inspired these feelings via some species-specific means. Such exchanges weren’t unheard of.

  The second passed however and the strange hot/cold pressure in his chest did as well. By the time he reached the turbolift he’d forgotten he’d experienced those feelings at all.

  “Begin final phase,” said Mr. Jaza from the coordination dais. Had any of his subordinates been capable of tearing themselves from their work to look his way, they would have seen what appeared to be the shadow of a humanoid figure standing in the center of a ring of floating disks of light, the coordination display.

  The silhouetting effect was the result of low ambient light settings in effect during this mission. Jaza actually found the perpetual twilight relaxing.

  Jaza’s position at the base level gave him a clear view of the upper tiers-three segmented decks outfitted with control nodes for the most powerful sensor array Starfleet technology had ever produced.

  All around him, hidden beneath the deck and beyond the bulkheads, that array focused itself entirely on piercing the secrets of the surrounding ring of exotic matter.

  Ordinarily automated, the Titan’s dorsally-mounted sensor pod was configured for temporary manned operation at the discretion of the ship’s senior science officer when a less orthodox and more hands-on approach to an investigation was deemed appropriate. On this occasion, the Occultus Ora had pushed Jaza’s buttons in all the rights ways.

  “Probe three, returning to dock,” said a voice from above.

  Scattered among the many consoles were other shadows, the members of his research team-Hsuuri, Polan, Fell, Roakn, aMershik, the two Benzites whose names he could never keep straight: Berias and Voris, and the young Cardassian cadet, Dakal.

  The other members of the group, Bralik and Pazlar, were cloistered down in the astrometrics lab, analyzing the massive holographic simulations translated from the collated probe data.

  Jaza confirmed the arrival on his own display but still asked for a verbal report from Dakal. The young Cardassian had the makings of a good scientist, despite his protestations to the contrary.

  “Probe Four, away,” said Dakal, somewhat mechanically. “Preparing for sensor sweep, series omega.” He was bent over a viewing node in the upper tier of the Starship Titan’s dedicated sensor module instead of availing himself of the view from the thick forward viewport that was normally shuttered when the pod was unmanned.

  There really wasn’t much point in looking out the window. Thanks to the darklings that surrounded them, all he would see that way was endless black. Through his little viewer he could see the real target of his team’s investigation.

  “Probe Four, accelerating to plus-two ionic,” said Ensign Hsuuri in a voice that managed to be equal parts purr and snarl. Only a meter or so away, she too was hunched over an observation node, focused entirely on its readouts, completely ignoring the panorama outside the plexi.

  Hsuuri was a Caitian, a feline species from a world Dakal had only read about and in whose existence he hadn’t quite believed until he found himself working with actual representatives. There were three others like Hsuuri on Titan-another female, Hriss, and two males. All the others occupied positions in Starfleet security. Dakal found the species arresting.

  Hriss was covered with fine auburn fur, broken here and there with white speckles about the size of Dakal’s thumb-print. She was thick bodied, somewhat imposing-a good quality for someone making a career in security. Hsuuri was smaller, slighter, and curvier, with a coat that looked like an arctic forest set ablaze. The lower part of her face, her throat, and, he presumed, her chest were covered in the snowy white fur. The rest of her was fire. She had a way of flicking her tail from side to side as she stood that was at once playful and somewhat hypnotic.

  Hsuuri was Dakal’s superior officer, as was nearly everyone on Titan,but that didn’t mean he couldn’t admire her from time to time. There was a lot to appreciate about her, and not all of it had to do with her cultural history. Feline or no, she was a fascinating woman.

  They hadn’t passed two words to each other that weren’t work related, but once omega phase was finished, who could say?

  At home there were taboos against too much close fraternization with non-Cardassians. There was also an even stronger proscription against joining the paramilitary organizations of former enemies. He hadn’t given a shtelabout that, had he? So Dakal saw no reason to balk at a chance to interview Hsuuri about their cultural differences over something hot and steamy. Yes, he would ask her to join him for that meal as soon as the work was done.

  “Cadet Dakal,” said Jaza’s voice from below, snapping him out of his reverie. “I asked you for an update.”

   Back to work, Zurin,he admonished himself. Mr. Jaza passed over four other candidates to put you on his team. Stop dreaming.“Probe Four is cresting the inner perimeter now, sir,” he said a little hastily. “Telemetric linksys is in the green.”

  “Activating TOV,” said Jaza, reaching for what looked like a large glass bowl impaled here and about with slender metallic rods and connected to the dais by a length of thick cable. It slid down over his forehead and eyes and then, “Counting down from five, four, three, two-”

  He was outside, free from the confines of Titan’s shell, free from the restrictions imposed by his physical body, out among the darklings. Only the small blinking display in the lower corner of his vision disrupted the illusion that his presence in open space was anything other than simulated.

  Using the TOV-telemetric observation VISOR-Jaza saw what the probe saw, its sensor data translated into the visual spectrum with small annotations scrolling by to denote the exact composition of whatever happened to be its target.

  It moved as he wished with little more than a flick of his mental will. Though he could never see them naturally, using the probe’s “eyes” he found himself floating in the midst of a universe of floating black asteroids of every conceivable shape and size.

  He felt a little pang of rue as he moved in on a particularly enticing hunk of darkling matter. They’d had a great time excavating all the data they could from this place, but once the omega sweep was done, Titanhad to move on.

  Later Starfleet might decide to place an outpost here to really plumb the depths of Occultus Ora, but that was years away. If it ever happened.

  The only real drawback of deep space exploration was what the humans often referred to as the Faustian bargain. He had no idea about the origin of the phrase, but the practical definition seemed to mean having to press on before you’d done more than scratch the surface of the new.

  Ah, well, he thought. Every action has its opposite. At least we were here first. “Lieutenant Pazlar,” he said aloud as he moved toward the great black hulk.

   “Pazlar here,”said a mellifluous voice over the comm.

  “Omega series is under way,” said Jaza, the pleasure in his own voice audible to anyone in a position to hear. “Prepare to receive telemetry from Probe Four.”

   “Ready when you are,”said Pazlar, as he closed in on his shadowy prey.

  “Excellent,” Jaza said. “Let’s get started.”

  Bralik shot slowly upward, happy to let her momentum take her where she wanted to go. In this case that meant about thirty vertical feet away from the deck of the stellar cartography lab, up through the strange inky formations, like asteroids and unlike them as well, that floated all around.

  The chamber-you couldn’t really call something so enormous a room-was a massive sphere in which star systems, individual cosmic bodies, even the entire galaxy could be displayed, at will, in three dimensions.

  Bralik took great pleasure in her visits here, but as a geologist, she normally had little official reason to drop by.

  This current project of Jaza’s was not only an opportunity to demonstrate her expertise as a rock hound but it also required her to spend lots of time in this lovely, lovely chamber.

  Of course the current setup also removed about a quarter of the fun of coming here, leaving only the job itself, the lowered g, and the companionship to entertain her. Bralik enjoyed fun and did her best to wedge it into just about any activity she could manage. Life was too short to do otherwise.

  It wasn’t a very Ferengi attitude, the seeking of pleasure without profit, but Bralik long ago decided that profit was sometimes in the eye of the beholder.

  Most of the crew of the Starship Titanfound the decreased gravity the mistress of this area enjoyed somewhat discomfiting. Not Bralik.

  Years working mining excavations situated on asteroids large and small had made gravity just another variable to her, nothing to get worked up about. Plus, the vibrations her spinning assent sent tingling across her lobes had an erotic quality she found hard to resist.

  The remaining quarter of pleasure in this duty was the company of the chamber’s only other occupant.

  Melora Pazlar, the ship’s lead stellar cartographer, was the reason for the area’s lowered g. Pazlar’s species, the Elaysians, had evolved in environments just like this, though how they’d also managed to maintain their basically humanoid structure was a matter of considerable conjecture. Unlike the squat, utilitarian Ferengi physique, Pazlar’s people were almost the living incarnation of delicate grace.

  Whatever the truth of her bizarre evolution, Pazlar took to her low-g haven like a slug to the swamp. Seeing her glide effortlessly from one position to the next was, Bralik thought, not unlike watching the flight of a creature from human myth that had once been described to her.

  Of course, the only thing about Pazlar that was angelic was her looks. The rest was a combination of prickles and frost, at least at first, but even those qualities could be enjoyable. Once you got past her initial standoffishness-a trait Bralik made it a rule to ignore in any being she encountered-Pazlar was an energetic, even magnetic companion. She’d traveled everywhere, despite being hobbled by gravities that were almost invariably crushing for her delicate frame. Her mind was like a laser drill. She looked after herself and was proof against any display of pity or condescension.

  She might look like she was built of dzurabones and silk, but Pazlar was solid as osmium ore. Like any raw metal, a little patience was all it took to polish up a gleam.

  “Somebody doesn’t look happy,” said Bralik as she passed between two of the black asteroids to bump lightly against Pazlar’s legs.

  “I miss my stars,” said the younger woman, dutifully helping Bralik orient herself so that their heads faced each other. “I’m sick of all this black.”

  She meant the current display dominating the entirety of the chamber. Instead of the normal star field, the two women were surrounded by the computer’s best guess at what Jaza’s probes and recalibrated sensors had under examination.

  It wasn’t truly blackness that engulfed them. There were halos of every hue sparking and dying pretty much constantly in all directions. Wherever they appeared, their light created the clear silhouette of something that looked like an asteroid but was very much not. It wasn’t the galaxy laid out like diamonds in invisible ether, but it was beautiful in its way.

  What the silhouettes were and how they happened to be here, arranged as they were around their invisible star, was the topic of much interest among Titan’s science specialists. Even Melora Pazlar had been among them at first. Nearly two weeks of diminishing participation in the actual probing had increased her sense of useless isolation.

  “Yeah,” said Bralik, peeking over at the other woman’s padd. “But buck up, angel. We’re nearly done.”

  “I can’t believe I let Jaza talk me into letting him commandeer my entire department for this.”

  “I wouldn’t describe a superior officer ordering you to reset all your equipment to display only exotic matter talking you into something.”

  “You’re right,” said Pazlar with another of her rueful but stunning smiles. “But Jaza doesn’t come at you that way. He’s all enthusiasm and love of pure knowledge. It gets you caught up.”

  “ ‘Jaza,’ huh?” said Bralik, grinning. “Not ‘Najem’?”

  “He gets his name back when I get my stars,” said Pazlar.

  “You’re a tough little thing when you want to be, aren’t you,” said Bralik, showing her own sharp teeth. “Anyway, it sounds more like you’re talking about Captain Riker than our Bajoran friend.”

  “It’s sort of the same thing,” said Pazlar, watching another halo fire up and die and tapping in the appropriate notations. “By the time I realized what he was doing, my stars were gone and I was stuck with this.”

  “Forty-eight,” said Bralik with a chuckle. Pazlar looked up from her padd but didn’t ask the question. Bralik answered anyway. “Rule of Acquisition number forty-eight: The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife.”

  They were quiet for a time, each watching the halos’ erratic discharges and making notes accordingly. Bralik had requested they bring an actual sample aboard for long-term study, but Jaza had deemed the darkling matter too volatile to risk danger to the crew. She’d been forced to make do with the holographic sims. Granted they were amazingly detailed and presented their data in the visual spectrum as much as possible, but you really couldn’t ever beat putting your hands on something.

  “Huh,” said Pazlar absently. “That’s odd.”

  “What is?” said Bralik.

  “I’m getting flickers in the boryon range.”

  “Meaning?” said Bralik.

  Pazlar ignored the question and “swam” down to a lower region of the massive display, disappearing briefly behind two enormous clumps of black. When she reappeared, Bralik saw her hovering near several midsized darklings, apparently waiting for something. She watched Pazlar watching as each object’s halo lit up in succession.

  By the time the third flare had come and gone, Bralik knew what had tweaked Pazlar’s interest. So far, without deviation, the darkling halos had been uniformly red or aqua or whatever. This undulating rainbow effect was something new.

  “Well?” said Bralik. “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Pazlar, her hands now tapping frantically at her padd. Something was obviously wrong. “Pazlar to Jaza.”

   “Go ahead,”came the immediate response.

  “Can you change the probe’s orientation to grid zed seven and tell me what you see?”

   “Executing,”said Jaza, clearly puzzled. Then, “What am I supposed to be-?”

  He stopped speaking abruptly, and Bralik thought she could see why. The strange halos that Pazlar noticed had returned and brought friends. A largish cluster of the rainbow auras flashed briefly around their respective darklings and faded again.

   “Caves of fire,”said Jaza under his breath. “Tell me that’s not what it looks like.”

  “Don’t go all Red Alert yet,” said Pazlar, her fingers tapping furiously on her padd. “It could be something local, or it could be a glitch in the probe’s transfer signal.”

   “No and no,”said Jaza through what sounded to Bralik like clenched teeth. “Wait a moment.”

  “Should we abort?” said Pazlar, after the moment had passed.

   “Wait,”said Jaza, the stress clearly overtaking him now. Whatever this was, it was something apparently dire. Bralik’s own padd was keyed to interpret only the geological data-information culled strictly from the molecular examination of the darklings. By contrast, Pazlar and Jaza were focused on subatomica.

  “Can you isolate the source of the distortion?” Pazlar asked.

   “Working on it…”

  “It looks like a ripple from some sort of-”

   “The distortion’s clearly artificial, Melora.”

  “But there’s nothing sentient-made out here.” Bralik could tell from her tone that Pazlar was grasping at straws. “Is it possible we missed-”

   “You know what this is as well as I do or you wouldn’t have contacted me,”said Jaza, his anger evident even over the comm. “That lunatic!”

  Unable to help or even participate, the Ferengi geologist contented herself with floating free, watching and listening as her colleagues worked frantically to solve their cryptic problem.

  “Should we abort?”

   “We’re not aborting,”said Jaza.

  “But, if all the data are corrupted…”

   “We don’t know that yet.”

  Time ticked and, though she still couldn’t decipher the meat of their conversation, Bralik felt the tension increase with each moment.