Star Trek: That Which Divides (16 page)

“It’s too bad,” Hertzog said, sighing. “The
Huang Zhong
’s only been in service for a couple of years. If circumstances were different, we could tow it out of here and back to a shipyard for repairs.”

“You want to babysit it for three years until the rift opens again?” McLoughlin asked, his grin wide as he regarded his friend.

Hertzog replied, “Okay, I guess Starfleet can build another one.” Then, as though realizing the potential callousness of his remark, he added, “I just wish we could say the same about the people we lost.”

“Aye,” Scott said, considering the
Huang Zhong
’s captain and those members of its crew who lost their lives in the crash. He had not known any of them, but they were fellow Starfleet officers and enlisted personnel, so they were
brothers and sisters. While he would rather be diverting his engineering expertise into learning what had contributed to the science vessel’s demise, he knew that Commander Spock was heading up that effort. If anyone could learn the truth about what had happened here, it was the
Enterprise
’s formidable science officer.

We owe that much to Captain Arens and his people
. Scott cleared his throat, thinking of the eleven caskets which had been placed with reverence in one of the
Enterprise
’s cargo bays. While it was not the ideal location in which to house the remains of the
Huang Zhong
’s crew, recovering the bodies and bringing them back to the
Enterprise
, so far as Scott was concerned, had been the first and most important of the tasks he had been given to complete.

“There’s nothing we can do for those poor souls, lads,” he said, forcing his attention back to the matters at hand. “What we
can
do is the job we’ve been given, and maybe help Mister Spock to find out what happened to them, and maybe prevent that from happening to anyone else.” He certainly had no desire to see any more caskets come to rest in his cargo bay.

Seeing nods of approval and even determination from his subordinates, Scott nodded. “All right then. It looks like we’re ready to go here. Go and grab something to eat, and be back here in an hour with your kit packed. The first team leaves at fifteen-thirty hours.” According to the information he had been given, it was coming up on early morning in the region of the planetoid where the
Huang Zhong
had crashed. Fourteen hours of daylight would be available to his team on their first day of work, much more conducive to their efforts than if the rift surrounding Gralafi were closed. Scott had read in one of the briefings about the
small, seemingly rogue world that, during the nearly three-year cycle when it was cut off from Dolysia, was shrouded in perpetual darkness. One of the rift’s many odd properties was that it somehow blocked the sun from being visible from Gralafi’s surface, even though it allowed light and heat from the star to reach the planetoid. The engineer tried to imagine what living and working as part of the mining community would be like under such conditions, never able to see the sun they knew was there, somewhere, hidden by whatever bizarre spectacle surrounded the odd little planetoid they called home. It was but one more mystery for which Spock would doubtless be trying to find an explanation even as he investigated what might have brought down the
Huang Zhong
.

Better him than me
, Scott mused, realizing for the first time that he was alone on the hangar deck, the rest of his team having already vacated the premises to finalize whatever preparations might still need to be addressed before their scheduled departure for Gralafi.
I’ve got my own mysteries to solve, like how in the name of all that’s holy am I supposed to get all of this done in three days?

Despite the friendly nature of relations between the Dolysians and the Federation, miners living and working on the planetoid could not be allowed unrestricted access to the wreckage of the
Huang Zhong
. The measures about to be taken by Scott and his engineers—gutting and scuttling the ship—though extreme, were required by regulations when it came to the presence of Starfleet vessels in situations such as this, when operational security and the protection of classified material and information was at issue. With the pending closure of the rift, waiting for towing vessels to be dispatched by Starfleet was not an option, and
neither was leaving behind a cadre of
Enterprise
personnel to safeguard the downed ship until the mysterious rift enveloping the Gralafi planetoid deigned to open once again. That left salvage and demolition up to Scott and his engineers, and accomplishing both tasks in the time allotted by Captain Kirk would prove challenging, to say the least.

Complicating the situation, if only slightly, was the fact that with both Kirk and Spock off the ship, command of the
Enterprise
had for the moment been left to Scott himself. This would prevent him from traveling to the planetoid, at least until the captain or the first officer returned. Therefore, Scott’s senior engineering assistant, John Kyle, would be overseeing the salvage activities and was in fact already on the planetoid, taking care of various preliminary tasks in advance of the main work party. None of that diminished Scott’s desire to be on Gralafi, watching over the delicate operation.

Such is life,
he reminded himself.
I guess I’ll just have to conjure this particular miracle for the captain via remote.

His reverie was broken by the sound of an alert klaxon wailing across the hangar deck. Snapping his head toward an alarm indicator set into the bulkhead near the exit hatch, Scott noted that it was flashing a bright, blinking crimson. No sooner did that register than the intercom’s whistle pierced the air over the sound of the siren, and was followed by the baritone voice of Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu.

“Red Alert! All hands to battle stations! This is not a drill. Mister Scott to the bridge!”

Sitting in the command chair at the center of the
Enterprise
’s bridge, Sulu kept his gaze fixed on the main viewscreen, doing his best to examine each of the stars
highlighting the black curtain of space displayed before him. He stared, waiting for anything—the slightest flicker or blink—that might betray the presence of what he knew was lurking out there.

Come on
, he thought.
Poke your head out here. Just once.

“Shields are at full power,” reported Lieutenant Manjula Rahda from where she sat at the helm console in front of Sulu. Normally assigned to gamma shift, she had been called to duty early in order to serve in Sulu’s stead while he held the conn. “Fire control reports all weapons standing by.”

Sulu nodded at the report. “Very well. Chekov, anything new on sensors?” As he spoke, he realized that he was gripping the arms of the command chair with such force that his fingers were beginning to tingle. He forced himself to release the tension in his arms, and even leaned back in his seat. The actions did little to lessen his heightened apprehension.
Relax, Lieutenant. How does the captain manage to make this look so easy?

Standing at the science station and bent over the console’s hooded scanner interface, his face bathed in a soft, blow glue, Ensign Pavel Chekov replied without looking up, “Negative, sir. There was a momentary surge of neutron radiation, but now there doesn’t seem to be anything there.”

“I think we all know better than that,” Sulu replied, his eyes drawn if only for a moment to the Red Alert indicator, which still flashed before him from the center of the dual console that served both the helm officer’s and navigator stations. Though he had ordered the audible alarms silenced, the illuminated signal was more than sufficient to communicate the seriousness of the situation. “They’re out there, somewhere.” The
Enterprise
sensors had taken
only seconds to register the odd neutron radiation reading, which could not be attributed to the starship itself, the mysterious spatial rift, or any of the civilian ship traffic in or near the anomaly or the Dolysian planet. Instead, the scanners had within microseconds searched the memory banks of the
Enterprise
’s main computer and found a match to the collected readings. The computer then automatically routed that information to the vessel’s defensive systems at the same time that it apprised the science station—and by extension, Sulu and the rest of the bridge—of what it believed it had found.

“A cloaked Romulan ship,” Chekov said. Though the ensign remained composed, Sulu still heard the slight tension in the younger man’s voice.

“And we’re sure it’s not a sensor reflection?” Sulu asked. “Or something else given off by the rift?”

Chekov shook his head. “I’ve double-checked the readings. The computer is certain we detected a Romulan ship, if only for a few seconds.”

So, where is it
? The unspoken question ringing in his ears, Sulu returned his attention to the viewscreen. There remained only empty space, punctuated by distant stars. Was he expecting the Romulan vessel to just reveal itself right before his eyes? Were that to happen, the helm officer knew that it likely would be a prelude to something far more disagreeable than the unease currently gripping him.

“I thought our sensors had been modified to identify cloaked ships,” said M’Ress, the female Caitian lieutenant seated at the communications station. As always, her speech sounded low and even relaxed. Sulu often wondered if her voice was a reflection of how she truly felt, even during situations like this where anxiety would seem like a
natural reaction, or if the felinoid officer was just very good at hiding her emotions in times of stress. He preferred to believe the former.

“The sensors were upgraded after Captain Kirk stole the cloaking device from that Romulan ship,” Chekov said, “and Mister Scott was able to figure out, at least to a point, how it worked.”

Sulu recalled Spock’s briefing following the successful completion of Captain Kirk’s top-secret mission to obtain by any means necessary a Romulan cloaking device, during which the captain had employed subterfuge and deception not only against the commander and crew of a Romulan warship but also the men and women under his own command. The
Enterprise
’s chief engineer had been able to study the pilfered technology for only a few days before the device was handed over to Starfleet’s tactical division. Despite the limited opportunity afforded him, Scott was able to determine the cloaking generator’s basic functionality, including the faint neutron energy signature it emitted while active and drawing power from the vessel in which it was installed. The signature it produced while fitted to the
Enterprise
’s propulsion system was different from those of Romulan vessels that had been scanned, but there was enough commonality between the various readings that Scott was able to program an algorithm for the computer subprocesses overseeing the ship’s sensor array. It was this new set of instructions that allowed the scanners to identify the telltale clue of a cloaked vessel as it entered detection range. The question now troubling Sulu was whether the sensors were accurate, or if they had fallen prey to some heretofore unknown properties exhibited by the Dolysian rift.

Behind him, Sulu heard the pneumatic hiss of the doors to the turbolift opening, and when he swiveled his chair to look he saw Montgomery Scott stepping onto the bridge. The chief engineer’s gaze was already focused on the viewscreen, and Sulu watched his features darken into a scowl as he attempted to process what he was seeing—or not seeing.

“What the devil’s with the Red Alert?” Scott asked, stepping from the upper bridge deck into the command well as Sulu rose from the captain’s chair.

Indicating Chekov at the science station, the helm officer replied, “Sensors tell us they picked up a cloaked vessel entering the system.”

“Romulan?” Scott asked, his frown deepening.

“That’s what it looked like, sir,” said the ensign, “though our sensors registered the reading only for a moment.”

Casting a brief glance back to the viewscreen, Scott folded his arms across his chest. “Status?”

“Our shields are up and weapons are on standby,” Sulu reported. “We’re continuing to conduct full sensor sweeps of the area, but except for the initial contact, we’ve found nothing, which doesn’t make any sense if that new program you installed to detect cloaked ships is working.”

Scott appeared to consider that before saying, “Unless the Romulans, or whoever we think might be out there, have found a better way of hiding themselves.” Moving away from the captain’s chair, the engineer made his way to the science station. “Mister Chekov, show me the sensor readings that triggered the alert.”

It took the younger officer a moment to recall the data and display it on one of his console’s monitors before stepping aside and allowing Scott to sit at the station.

“What are you thinking, Scotty?” Sulu asked, moving
to stand at the red, curved railing separating the command well from the upper deck. It required physical effort on his part to keep from repeatedly looking over his shoulder at the viewscreen. Part of him kept wondering when the Romulan ship—or whatever could be out there—might choose to reveal itself.

Grunting, Scott replied, “That either I or my cute little program isn’t as clever as I thought we were.” As he began to input instructions to the workstation, his fingers tapping various buttons and controls spread across the console, he glanced over his shoulder. “I tried to make the detection algorithm broad enough to account for variances in the energy surge created by the cloaking field generator when interacting with different power systems.”

“It’s not hard to think the Romulans found some way to either alter or conceal that energy signature for their ships,” Chekov said, “particularly after we stole one of their cloaking devices.”

Scott nodded. “Exactly. The trick now is to find a way to expand the program’s search parameters and recognition protocols to better distinguish variations in the range of potential energy signatures, and do it in such a way that it doesn’t trip a false alarm.” He shrugged as he continued to work. “Of course, it’s likely that whatever trick I come up with will only be a temporary solution.”