Sargasso Sector Read online

  “Of course, sir,” Tev said smoothly. “My point is, our own Sargasso Sector came into being in essentially the same fashion as the one on Earth. That is, by surrounding ‘currents’—in this case, of course, celestial forces—which have isolated this area and created a becalmed ‘sea’ out of which these trapped or abandoned ships cannot drift.”

  Tactical Systems Specialist Fabian Stevens whistled between his teeth. “This band of junk extends about half a light-year on the east-west axis and almost twelve AUs on the north-south. I won’t even try to calculate how much area that covers. What kind of celestial forces are we talking about here?”

  Tev shrugged. “It’s a fairly unusual confluence of events,” he said. “Ringing the Sargasso Sector are, in no particular order, one perfect binary black hole system, one system of unusually high magnetic activity, and no less than two quasars captured in some sort of complex mutual orbit, the result of which is a stasis zone, enclosed by the pull of the different gravitational and magnetic fields. This is a particularly ancient system, so such anomalies are to be expected.”

  “To have four such anomalies arranged close enough to create this dead space,” said Gomez, “but in such perfect balance so they don’t interfere with one another….” She looked over at Soloman, the Bynar computer specialist. Able to interface directly with computers, she knew she could always trust him with rapid calculations. “What are the odds, Soloman?”

  Soloman smiled. “Depending on how you choose to view it, either some several trillion to one against…or fifty-fifty.”

  Tev shook the precisely groomed dark brown fringe around his neck. “That’s preposterous,” he snapped.

  “Odds,” said Soloman, “really, are nothing more than a numeric representation of the probability of a certain event either happening or not happening. In a game of poker, you might need one specific card to fill your hand, say the ace of diamonds. You draw one card. The event you are calculating is whether or not the card you draw will be the ace of diamonds. Therefore, you either draw the ace of diamonds or you don’t draw the ace of diamonds. Fifty-fifty.”

  Tev was scowling. “You’re playing with semantics. What if you need two cards, or three? Or if the variables are far more complex, on the cosmic scale of four balanced anomalous systems?”

  “Depending, of course, on how complex a model you wish to construct, you can always introduce a wider set of variables, treating each bit of the equation as a separate piece and come up with a more comprehensive number. But at the lowest common denominator,” the Bynar said, “the equation will always reduce down to yes or no. Opened or closed. Binary. Can this happen? Yes, it can. No, it can’t. Fifty-fifty.”

  Gomez tried to cover a smirk as Tev crunched Soloman’s numbers for himself. Everyone but the literal-minded Tellarite realized the Bynar was having a little fun at his expense. Still, while the captain might tolerate the tangents their discussions often wandered off on, it was time to get back to the business at hand.

  “We’ll have plenty of time to study that,” Gomez said, taking back, at a nod from Gold, control of the discussion. “In fact, Tev, you’ll take the point on that. Pattie,” she said to P8 Blue, “you’ll lead up charting, cataloguing, and structural survey of the derelict ships. Bart and Carol, you two will catalogue what you can of language and culture as we go along. Likewise, Soloman, you’ll recover as much of their computer systems as time allows for later analysis. Dr. Lense will handle the examination of any biological remains we may find.”

  Gomez nodded at Chief Engineer Nancy Conlon. “Your crew standing by for some heavy-duty demolition, consultation, and reverse engineering duties, Lieutenant?”

  “We’re ready,” Conlon said, rubbing her hands together in anticipation. “I hear there are some pretty amazing propulsion systems waiting for us to get our spanners on.”

  “Then,” said Gold, “it sounds like we all know what we need to do.” He tapped a tabletop switch and called to the bridge. “Wong, proceed to point alpha at half impulse. Shabalala,” the captain added, “warm up the proton-torpedo tubes. Demolition begins in precisely twelve hours. Let’s get to work, people.”

  Chapter

  3

  Pattie hauled herself into the shuttlecraft’s copilot seat next to Soloman and, as it conformed itself to her insectoid body, buckled herself in.

  “I have completed the checklist on the external sensor arrays,” she said. “Primary and backup systems are running, all datastreams feeding to the da Vinci’s mainframe.”

  “I’m ready here,” Soloman said, tapping his combadge. “Shuttlecraft Shirley to Ensign McAvennie, we’re set for bay doors to open.”

  “Roger, Shirley,” came the reply from the shuttle control officer. “Doors opening. Have a safe trip.”

  Pattie clicked and buzzed with excitement as Soloman piloted the shuttle through the forcefield that held the vacuum of space at bay. “Some of these ships,” she said, “are remarkable. One would need a lifetime to adequately investigate even a few of them.”

  “And we have,” Soloman said with a glance at the time on the console, “less than ten hours to make a sweep of the first half dozen before the da Vinci begins to destroy them.”

  The Shirley drifted from the bay and Soloman lit the thrusters. The da Vinci had settled into a stationary position less than a thousand kilometers from the edge of the debris field, a thin layer of wreckage and dismembered parts from countless vessels that swarmed around the conglomeration of derelict ships like the sargassum that covered the surface of the sector’s earthly namesake.

  Pattie clicked in regret. “Yes, it’s a pity. Some will need to be destroyed to clear the way through the sector, but we’ll try to move those we safely can. Either way, we can’t risk doing anything to these ships until we’ve run an analysis on each and every one we propose to tamper with in order to determine the safety of such a move. At any rate, we’ve known from the start that our mission was to be as much about demolition as hard science.”

  “I understand,” Soloman said, setting course for the closest of the derelict ships, a massive dark structure of many facets, an ill-defined smudge that blocked the stars. “A convoy of colonization ships are on course to pass right through the Sargasso Sector and the very conditions that hold these ships block any easy alternate route, preventing the convoy from altering course to go around the obstruction. But that doesn’t mean I have to like the situation. These ships are an invaluable scientific and cultural find. To destroy so many without proper study merely to clear the way for navigation…well, it just feels wrong.”

  “I’m sure you won’t find any onboard or in Starfleet who disagree with you,” Pattie said. “But this colony’s been in the planning stages for a year and a half. Those cargo ships are good for barely warp four for six or seven hours at a stretch. If they tried going around the Sargasso Sector, it would add nearly a year to the voyage, time their resources and changing conditions in their destination system don’t give them. Like it or not, they will be passing through this system in less than one month and there better be a clear path for them to take.”

  The Bynar nodded and said, “Yes. We destroy them reluctantly.” He looked at Pattie with sad eyes. “That doesn’t make them any less gone.”

  “No,” Pattie agreed and the two crewmates traveled several hundred klicks in silence. Finally, in an effort to lighten the mood, the Nasat said, “By the way, I enjoyed your joke on Tev. Last I saw him, his fringe was still ruffled trying to work out your theory on chance.”

  “Well,” Soloman said modestly, “sometimes it’s difficult to resist the temptation to put confusion in his path.” Then the Bynar smiled. “Fabian told me I did a wonderful job of messing with his head.”

  “Absolutely. A clever simplification that makes just enough sense to be irrefutable. Sensor arrays are coming online now,” Pattie said suddenly.

  The view from the Shirley’s window was blocked by the looming blot of the black ship. Soloman deftly work
ed the controls. “Holding steady at optimum sensor range,” he said. “Scanning for a computer core. Yes, it is a simplification, but once I said it, I started to wonder if it was in fact nonsense.”

  Pattie cast Soloman a skeptical look. “I have many more legs than Tev. It is far more difficult to make me stumble.”

  “No, I am serious. Take the example of a flat two-faced object, such as a Ferengi betting coin. Chance says that in any given set of tosses, the coin will come up heads or tails in statistically equal numbers. It’s either/or, therefore fifty-fifty.”

  Pattie said, “But that’s the case only in very simple systems. In the case of a poker game and the drawing of a specific card, there are not two choices involved, there are fifty-two, therefore increasing substantially the odds against drawing the necessary card.”

  “Ah, but the choice isn’t between picking the hypothetical ace of diamonds against any other specific card in the deck. In any individual example of drawing a card, it comes down to yes, you will draw the ace, or no, you won’t draw the ace.”

  Pattie waved four of her eight legs at Soloman and turned her attention to her sensors. “Now you’re messing with my head,” she said.

  “Believe what you will,” Soloman said, but the Nasat was fairly certain she saw the whisper of a smile on his lips as he said it.

  Lieutenant Commander Mor glasch Tev stood at the tactical station on the da Vinci’s bridge, looking as sharp as a Starfleet recruiting poster. Fabian Stevens wouldn’t swear to it, but from the way the Tellarite was briskly keying his way through the weapons system checklist and snapping out comments and commands to engineering, Tev just might have been having fun. The reason Stevens wouldn’t swear this to be fact was that he didn’t think he had ever seen Tev having fun before and therefore didn’t know that he would recognize the phenomenon were he to actually witness it.

  Nonetheless, ten hours before the demo was scheduled to commence the commander was on station, checking systems that both Stevens and Shabalala had, in fact, checked an hour earlier when coming on duty. And which would be checked again, later in the day, when Joanne Piotrowski came on duty for beta shift. If that wasn’t a party, what was?

  “Everything in order, Commander?” Stevens inquired.

  “Seems to be,” Tev muttered, distracted by information he was studying on one of the displays. “Has the targeting analysis been completed yet?”

  “Yup. We’ve located an isolated pocket of derelicts that appear to be inert where we can start. No life, energy, or radiation signals from any of them,” Stevens said. “Six of the ships were giving off anomalous readings, which is probably some sort of ambient energy signature, but we’ve sent Soloman and Pattie aboard the Shirley to take a closer look before we commit.”

  Tev nodded. He tapped the keypad, then nodded again at the targeting data scrolling across the screen.

  “Odds are,” Stevens said, “they’ll check out just fine.”

  Tev’s attention snapped from the console to Fabian. “What did you say, Mr. Stevens?”

  Stevens said, “I said I’m sure the ships will check out fine.”

  Tev narrowed his eyes. “Mm, yes.” Stevens allowed himself a quick grin as Tev turned his attention back to his work. Gotcha, the engineer thought, pleased with his little dig at the itch Soloman had planted in Tev’s mind. You definitely messed with his head, my Bynar friend. We’ll make a practical joker of you yet.

  “Targeting is programmed into the firing system,” Tev announced a few moments later. “I’ll send them to the active buffer as soon as Soloman and Blue clear those last six ships.”

  “Do you want me to isolate this console to preserve your settings?” Stevens asked as the commander completed his task.

  Tev pondered the suggestion for a moment. “Yes, why not?”

  “Sure,” said Stevens. “Doesn’t pay to take chances, does it?”

  Stevens could feel Tev’s stare boring through his skull, heard the little rumble of a question caught deep in the Tellarite’s throat, but pretended as though he was unaware of either and went about his business.

  Gotcha again, Stevens grinned to himself.

  The Shirley skimmed past the dull black metal of the first ship, its sensor arrays reaching and probing into the deepest recesses of the massive derelict.

  “Nothing,” said Pattie. “Not a blip from inside that thing. The outer hull is emitting low-level radiation, which would account for our preliminary anomalous readings, but everything else is flatline.”

  “Negative on the computer core as well,” Soloman confirmed.

  “Whatever powered this hulk was long ago depleted…not that I could locate a propulsion system, let alone any spent or residual materials. This one’s a thorough puzzle. Unless we find another like it somewhere else, we’ll never know what made her run.”

  Soloman piloted the shuttle toward their second target, some two thousand kilometers from the starboard side of the first. “Then let’s move on. We’re down to less than nine hours, with five more ships to scan.”

  A red light began flashing on the heads-up on the window before Soloman. An urgent beeping tone accompanied it.

  Pattie looked over, clicking questioningly.

  Soloman frowned at the display. “According to the instruments, the da Vinci’s weapons systems have just targeted the Shirley,” he said in a voice more confused than frightened. “We’re about to be fired upon.”

  “Captain?” The urgency in Lieutenant Songmin Wong’s voice made David Gold stop short and tap his combadge in the corridor where he was on his way to engineering.

  “Yes, Wong?”

  “Ship’s computer has taken control of targeting and fire controls, sir,” the conn officer quickly reported. “Forward torpedo tubes are activated and locked on to the Shirley.”

  Gold had begun running before Wong finished speaking. “Try manual shutdown. Override power to the weapons systems. How the hell did this happen?”

  “Don’t know, sir. According to the conn, everything’s normal and weapons are offline.”

  Gold had sprinted into the lift, standing impatiently while it delivered him to the bridge. “They’re obviously not. Keep trying the overrides. I’m on my way.”

  “Shirley to da Vinci, come in, da Vinci,” Pattie buzzed urgently into her communicator. “We’re reading a weapons-lock on our position. Please advise.”

  Soloman said in disbelief, “It’s no mistake. We’ve been targeted. I’m putting up maximum shields.”

  “For all the good they’ll do against more than a few torpedo hits. This is madness,” Pattie said. “The da Vinci isn’t responding.”

  “There might be trouble onboard,” he said. “Who knows what could have been lurking in one of these derelicts, waiting for a functioning vessel to come along?”

  “What are the chances of that?” Pattie snapped as the urgent beeping turned to a continuous high-pitched whine. Both knew what that new alarm meant…that the da Vinci had fired.

  “Perhaps better than we might think,” murmured Soloman and began what he knew to be an entirely futile evasive maneuver.

  “I have torpedo away,” shouted Lieutenant Wong as Captain Gold raced onto the bridge.

  Sonya Gomez was just moments behind him. “Captain…?”

  Gold held up his hand, his eyes glued to the viewscreen in horror. The Shirley was visible, looping tightly around to dive down behind the massive black ship. He expected to see, in the next second, the brilliant white flash of a torpedo tracking it, but the moments ticked by and it did not come.

  “Captain,” Anthony Shabalala said from tactical. “We didn’t fire.”

  “Gold to Shuttlecraft Shirley,” the captain said. “You are in no danger, Shirley! We experienced a malfunction in the fire control that simulated targeting and locking, but it was only a simulation.”

  “I’ve taken the entire weapons system offline and isolated them from the power grid,” Shabalala announced. “All systems responding n
ormally now, Captain.”

  “Shirley to da Vinci.”

  “Yes, Blue,” Gold answered, in obvious relief. “Are you both all right?”

  “Affirmative, sir,” she responded. “We were, needless to say, more than a little concerned there for a moment.”

  “So were we,” said Gold. “I would understand if you wanted to return to the ship until we’ve located the problem.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Soloman’s voice came over the communicator. “We’re unhurt and undamaged. The cause of the malfunction is, I assume, being eliminated even as we speak.”

  “Then by all means,” Gold said. “Proceed. Thank you. Da Vinci out.” He turned to Gomez, who had moved to a science station and was reviewing the ship’s internal log. Every action performed by ship’s computer was automatically recorded on a separate memory unit encased in materials designed to survive the most catastrophic deep space accident. “How did this happen?” he asked her.

  Gomez’s eyebrow shot up in surprise. “According to the log, it didn’t.”

  Chapter

  4

  Chief Engineer Nancy Conlon backed away from her latest handiwork in the da Vinci’s cramped engine room, carefully, as though afraid to take her eyes off the patchwork of connectors and relays lest it all fall apart.

  “Okay,” she breathed at last. The petite brunette lieutenant turned to face the operations console, which was, at present, manned by her best junior engineer, Ensign Max Hammett. “Let her rip.”

  Hammett reached out to play the controls. “Alrighty then,” he said. “Engaging impulse power.” He tapped more keys. “While that warms up, we can patch the new intermediary modular into the grid.” Conlon watched his fingers flash across the touch screen, her eyes flicking every few seconds to the new unit as though expecting to see smoke pour from it.

  A green light flashed and Hammett turned to smile at Conlon. “Online and checking out at optimum, Lieutenant. Nice little patch job there.”