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  “Why?”

  “We—that is, Soloman and I—” She faltered. “It’s about what happened to them. We believe there may have been an electromagnetic pulse. It would instantly disrupt their electronic systems, the way an otherwise nonfatal electric shock can stop the human heart. They just stopped, you see—”

  “Their memory,” said Soloman, “is very computer-like as well, nonvolatile computer memory.”

  Gomez had an idea where this was going, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. “You’re saying their memories are intact, that we might be able to read their minds?”

  “Yes,” said Lense, “I suppose that’s so, but what we really mean is that—”

  “Every memory, every component of their personality, the very last thought they had before their ‘death,’ is in there, and presumably intact.” Soloman completed her sentence. “There are no decay organisms here to degrade the bodies, and their unique metabolism doesn’t cause the kind of breakdown you see in most organic species. They’re absolutely, perfectly preserved. They’re not dead so much as just—shut down.”

  Gomez looked at Soloman. “Go ahead. Say it.”

  And the little computer expert did. “They’ve crashed, and we think we can reboot them.”

  Chapter

  6

  Ambassador Goveia scowled, rubbing the narrow bridge of his nose. “You’re telling me, Captain, that there are survivors on this derelict?”

  Gold sighed. “Not survivors, precisely. Their life processes have ceased. My crew believes they can be resuscitated.”

  “Captain, these beings could have died years, even centuries ago. It seems unlikely even the famed S.C.E. can bring back the dead. It’s not even really your area of expertise. Besides, there are how many—”

  “Forty-one.”

  “Forty-one corpses on that ship. That has to be weighed against the lives of millions of Lokra.” Goveia’s voice wavered slightly, as though asking for understanding, or sympathy.

  “If the crew can be revived, their ship is functional and can be flown to a safe trajectory that will bypass the planet. There’s ample time.”

  “And if this madness fails?” There was no pleading this time.

  “Then we’ll be forced to consider other options.”

  Goveia frowned. “I suggest you not wait that long. I’m expecting a call back at any moment from your Captain Scott at Starfleet Command.” He somehow managed to look down his thin nose, without moving. “If I have to go over your head to resolve this situation, Captain, I will.”

  The screen on Gold’s desk blanked.

  Gold’s jaw tightened with frustration. His instincts told him the Lokra were hiding something. They also told him Goveia was a good but stubborn man who was too close to the situation to be objective.

  If he was going to uncover the truth, it would require going around the ambassador, not through him.

  Almost immediately there was another incoming subspace communication. It was Captain Huxter on the Norman Scott.

  “David, I thought you should know I just heard from Ambassador Goveia.”

  “As it happens, I just talked with him myself.”

  Huxter frowned. “Then he told you we’re on the way?”

  “No. No, he left out that piece of information.”

  “Sorry, David. I just ran out of excuses.” Then he grinned. “But at our current speed of warp one, we’ll be there in about one and a half years.”

  Gold returned his grin. “It won’t take the ambassador that long to start wondering where you are.”

  “I’m sure. But it will buy you a little time, and I’m starting to think your suspicions are justified. My science officer found something in the sensor logs from that giant planet.”

  Gold instantly sobered. “Something you didn’t see during your initial sweep?”

  Huxter’s grin faded. “We didn’t know what we were looking for. I’m sorry it took this long to find it. Those mining machines have messed up the surface pretty badly in spots. We found a planetwide network of crude roads designed for foot or possibly cart traffic, simple dwellings made of stone and metal, and what seem to be mines and quarries. Those are the sites most disturbed by the Lokra mining machines, though, so it’s hard to be sure.”

  “But no signs of an advanced civilization?”

  “That’s where it gets strange. We found exactly one site with any signs of high technology, right on the equator. The miners nearly obliterated the site. We think there’s a two-kilometer radio dish built into a natural depression, a radio telescope or a communications dish, or both. Right next to that is a large complex surrounded by primitive fortifications. There are quarries inside the fortifications; something big was built there that isn’t there now. There’s a ring-shaped scar about half a kilometer in diameter with radiation residue consistent with fusion rocket exhaust.”

  “That fits our spinship, but it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Yeah. How does a civilization barely out of the Stone Age build a large radio dish overnight, and then follow up with an interstellar spacecraft?”

  “Perhaps,” said Gold, “a better question is, why?”

  Gomez monitored the exchange between Stevens and Lense from a few meters away. She wondered if she would have to step in. They had worked round the clock for two days in the grueling conditions of the spinship, and tempers were short.

  Fabian waved his arms. “You want me to start spinning the ship back up? It took Pattie and me a day and a half to figure out how to steer and fire the thruster nozzles to spin the ship down!”

  “Well,” Elizabeth replied, “I’m sure you learned a great deal. We may be able to apply it elsewhere, but I’d suggest you turn them back around now, and return the ship to its original spin. The artificial gravity is down to what, twelve standard gravities? We’ll hardly notice the difference.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “That’s exactly the point. These are high-gravity organisms, and they need that gravity to survive. It holds the layers of their bodies together. If I resuscitate them in anything less then ten g’s, the pressure of their own circulatory system will blow them apart. Anything less than a full fourteen carries risk.”

  Fabian looked doubtful.

  “Look,” said Lense, “you’ve checked over every inch of this ship’s structure. There are no airlocks, no docking hub, no pressure suits. The Strata knew if they left their ship in flight they’d die instantly. They didn’t build parts they could never use.”

  Sighing and turning away, Fabian said, “You heard her, Pattie. Let’s get to work. Have Laura beam me across the ship to the engineering section.”

  In a moment he disappeared in a blue shimmer of lights. Moving on the ship was so difficult, it was easier to beam point to point if you were traveling more than twenty meters or so.

  Gomez shuffled over and examined the Strata body Lense and Soloman were working on. It was connected to a web of cables and wires that snaked off along the floor in both directions, and injection pumps marked with radiation warning symbols hung off the body at several points.

  Lense saw her dismayed expression. “Did I give the impression that this was going to be simple?” She grinned slightly. “Okay, so maybe I did. A little. It isn’t simple. It’s not like applying a defibrillator to a humanoid heart or administering CPR. We have to restart both the body systems and the brain at the same time. I can electrically stimulate most of the body systems, and injections of radioactive isotopes will act like adrenaline in a human patient. But the brain is Soloman’s bailiwick.”

  Soloman stood on a low work platform where he could reach a row of electrical connections along the Strata’s body. “The Strata brain isn’t centralized. It occupies a stack of sixteen thin body layers. Because it’s physically distributed, it depends on timing pulses to keep the various processing and memory elements in sync. We need external pulses to restart the brain. It’s a very delicate operation. If the procedure fails, this will
probably be why.”

  “But if it doesn’t work,” said Gomez, “they’re no worse off than they were before, right? We can try again?”

  Soloman and Dr. Lense exchanged a glance that raised the hair at the back of Gomez’s neck.

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Lense looked grim. “We decided our best odds are an all-or-nothing approach. That’s why the bodies are all connected with these wires. We’ve wired them in parallel. We plan to revive all forty-one Strata at the same time.”

  Gomez blinked in surprise. “Why didn’t anyone run this by me first?”

  Lense shrugged. “We’ve been working fast, and you’ve had a lot on your plate. We haven’t had time until now.” Lense hurried on, before Gomez could protest. “I know it sounds risky, but the Strata evolved to link electrically. This is our master for the circuit,” she gestured at the elephantine body they were working on. “If we get one brain started, it will provide the external pulses for the other forty, through the amplified connections we’ve made. If we bring this big guy back, the rest will follow. But if we do them individually, while we’d have forty-one chances to get it right, we’d also have forty-one chances for something to go wrong.”

  Gomez looked at the cables snaking from this body to the next one, ten meters away. “And if it goes wrong?”

  “Once we start the process,” said Soloman, “we won’t be able to stop. If things don’t go as planned, the Strata’s memories will be scrambled, even erased. We might be able to bring back their bodies, but their minds would be gone.”

  Gomez sighed. The first things that came into her head was that Lense had recently assured a young boy that she could provide a cure for a vicious disease that was, in fact, beyond her means, and that Soloman’s consistent refrain since his bond-mate 111 had died last year was that he was in many ways inferior as a single Bynar.

  But she banished those thoughts. Lense was tops in her field, and Gomez herself was the first to tell Soloman he was being silly whenever he decried his own abilities. Besides which, Soloman himself hadn’t been singing that refrain very much since their mission to Venus.

  Trust your people.

  On the other hand, the Strata didn’t quite fit in anyone’s field, engineering or medical. She could only hope for the best. “How long till you can do it?”

  “Within the hour. As soon as Fabian and Pattie have the spinship back up to the proper rotation, we’ll be good to go.”

  Corsi stepped out of the security office into the corridor, and jumped as she nearly ran head-on into Fabian. He impulsively leaned over and gave her a quick kiss. She frowned and took a step back, looking around to make sure none of her security people had seen them. “Could we have a little professionalism here? I’m on duty.”

  He grinned. His eyes looked red, and he needed a shave and a shower. “I thought you’d be glad to see me. I’ve hardly been off the spinship in days.” He stretched, hopped, and to her surprise, put out his arms and did a little pirouette in the hallway. “You’ve got no idea how good it feels to be out of that suit and back in a real gravity field, where you can move like a normal human being.”

  “I am. I just wasn’t expecting you, is all. Should I see if I can get someone to cover for me for a while?”

  “No time. I’ve got to go consult with Captain Gold. That’s why I’m back. The captain requested me, and Tev was more than happy to take my place for a while. He’s been dying to get over there. The captain’s taken a sudden interest in electromagnetic pulse weapons, in particular how to defend an unshielded, unhardened ship against them. Something about an ionized plasma shield. I’m going to have to recite from literature I haven’t even thought about in years.” He grinned. “It’ll be fun. You should come.”

  “Pass. There must be something else I have to do.”

  Fabian started walking away backward, still talking. “Sure you won’t come with me?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I think I’ll go work out.” She wiggled her shoulders. “I’ve been sitting for far too long.”

  Tev beamed into the spinship’s control room, making a point-to-point transfer from the engineering section. “We are at seven-point-one RPM,” he reported, “and you have fourteen standard gravities at deck level. You may proceed when ready.”

  A temporary Starfleet-issue console had been set up to control and monitor the revival process. It looked incongruous, tiny next to the massive Strata devices and the inert bodies of the Strata themselves. Lense and Soloman worked intently, as Gomez looked on.

  Gomez turned to Tev. “I thought you would stay in engineering.”

  “I didn’t want to miss this. Besides, if the doctor succeeds, the Strata should quickly be able to tend to their own ship.”

  “Well,” said Lense, “here goes nothing. I’m starting the primary timing pulses—now—with a low-level current to preheat the circulatory system.”

  Lense and Soloman tapped at the console. A small screen displayed a flat, wireframe grid. The image was labeled BRAIN ACTIVITY, but the grid wasn’t very active. One corner pulsed several times a second, with the timing impulse.

  Then there was the smallest change. A slow rolling wave crossed the grid from one side to the other, taking several seconds in the process.

  “We’re committed,” said Lense. “Bringing up nervous system base current two points. Soloman, let’s go for phase two.”

  Fabian sat in front of the captain’s desk in the ready room where he’d been for nearly an hour. Once again, the old man had surprised him, asking a series of insightful and probing questions about EMP defense strategies. Engineering might not have been Gold’s specialty, but he was a quick study. The man’s grand-fatherly demeanor made you forget the razor-sharp mind behind it.

  Gold had found a reference in the Starfleet archives to a comet that had been vaporized by phaser fire and ionized to temporarily shield a space station against an EMP attack. It was a workable solution, except for the lack of a convenient comet.

  “Begging your pardon, Captain, but I assume you don’t want this information just out of curiosity. Where are you expecting an EMP attack to come from?”

  “I’m still trying to figure that out. I’m certain there was an intentional EMP attack on the spinship. If it happened once, it could happen again. Our shields can’t protect something as large as the spinship, so I’m looking for alternatives.”

  The intercom beeped, followed by Shabalala’s voice. “Captain, you’ve got an incoming call from Ambassador Goveia.”

  Gold scowled. “He’s probably figured out why the Norman Scott has been ‘delayed’ and plans to give me an earful.”

  Stevens rose, but Gold motioned him back into his seat. “This shouldn’t take too long.”

  He turned to face his desktop viewer. “Pipe it in here, Shabalala.”

  But the man on the screen didn’t look angry to Fabian. He look contrite, and just a little frantic. “Captain, I just heard from the Second Prime. He didn’t support the action. There was great debate among the Lokra. I knew there was division in the government, but I assure you I had no idea—”

  Gold stood, leaning forward on his desk. “Quickly,” he said. “What happened?”

  “The Breen communications relay. They’re going to fire an electromagnetic pulse.”

  “When?”

  “They were already turning the array. It may have fired by now.”

  Gold bolted through the bridge doors, with Fabian right on his heels. “Wong, full impulse!” He glanced at Fabian. “That array is six light-minutes away,” Gold said as he made for his chair. “We’ve got something less than that to create and deploy a plasma shield between it and the spinship. Find me the best spot, and we’ll figure the rest on the way.”

  Lense stared so intently at the brain activity monitor display, Gomez thought it might burst into flame from the power of her attention. Other than an occasional ripple and the artificial timing pulses, there was nothing.

  Th
e doctor ventured a sidelong glance through her faceplate at Gomez. “What’s the body temperature?”

  Gomez checked the readings. “Up twenty degrees from the last reading.”

  Lense grunted. “Which is either approaching normal, or a deadly fever, depending on which, if either, of my estimates of normal body temperature for the Strata is correct.”

  “That’s strange,” said Tev.

  “Please, not strange,” said Gomez. “Right now almost any ‘strange’ is bound to be bad.”

  “I suspect so,” said Tev, who was scanning upward with his tricorder. “The da Vinci just left the ring at maximum impulse. No voice communications. I’m getting a low-speed data stream on the tricorder, probably all they could punch through the hull once they left position. It says,” he made an unhappy snuffle, “prepare for EMP. Going to intercept.”

  Gomez pounded her fist against the console. “The captain was right! We were so close. We’re going to bring them back just so they can be killed again.”

  “Well, good news, then,” said Lense, her voice grim, “this doesn’t seem to be working anyway.”

  Chapter

  7

  The da Vinci jumped to warp as soon as Stevens provided the coordinates, then dropped back to impulse after a few seconds. The bridge crew responded without question, executing the orders with precision.

  “Tell me we have phasers,” Gold said to Shabalala. There had been no time to check. Without the phasers, the plan wouldn’t work.

  “Engineering says they should be ready, but there wasn’t time for diagnostics or pressure testing. We could blow an EPS manifold or the coolant system.”

  “No choice,” said Gold. “We’ll try it. Red alert.”

  “Aye,” said Shabalala. “Red alert.”

  The bridge went to emergency lighting, and the warning klaxon sounded.

  “I’ve routed the deuterium tanks and life support reserves to the Bussard intakes,” said Stevens. “I’m blowing them out the purge vents. Just guessing about the mix, but—” On the main viewer, clouds of gas jetted forward from the da Vinci’s warp nacelles. Turning to Shabalala, Stevens said, “Tony, set phasers for widest dispersal, maximum power, and fire when ready.”