Star Trek™: Corps of Engineers

Turn the Page by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore

Troubleshooting by Robert Greenberger

The Light by Jeff D. Jacques

The Art of the Comeback by Glenn Greenberg

Signs from Heaven by Phaedra M. Weldon

Ghost by Ilsa J. Bick

Remembrance of Things Past Book 1 by Terri Osborne

COMING SOON:

Remembrance of Things Past Book 2 by Terri Osborne

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For Edward Bowles

In memory still bright.

Thank you for everything.

CHAPTER 1

“You did what?”

Fabian Stevens squirmed where he stood. You know, Dom could stare down a Denebian slime devil, and then she’d probably shoot the thing and eat it for lunch. I guess that would make me dinner, then. Let’s see, a good Chianti would probably be best for my heart. Maybe a zinfandel to accompany the brain? Wonder if Poynter’s still got any of that tequila left? Or would that give a whole new meaning to “drunk with power”?

As Domenica Corsi’s glare landed on him with all of the force and intensity of a phaser set to kill, Stevens wasn’t quite certain whether those were going to be his last thoughts. He really hoped they wouldn’t be. But the look on her face was definitely something he knew meant Bad Things would happen, and soon. He was still amazed that for someone who’d been laughing and joking with the others just a few moments before, she could go from zero to bitch in under a second.

After months of dating the woman, it shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did.

Fortunately for the entire da Vinci crew—at least, those who weren’t still needed to actually run the Sabre-class vessel—Captain David Gold chose that moment to step into the fray. The ship’s small mess hall was confining enough. Destroying the furniture probably wouldn’t have gone over well in Stevens’s annual review. “Not afraid of a little zero-G, are you, Corsi?” Gold asked, perhaps enjoying needling his security chief just a little too much.

Stevens tried as hard as he could not to laugh. Oh, sure, it had been the captain’s and Commander Gomez’s idea to throw the party for Corsi’s long-overdue promotion to full commander. But the hiding place for her new rank pip—floating in space outside the da Vinci—had been his idea, and his alone.

The fact that the captain and first officer had thought it a brilliant notion just added to how much Fabian Stevens loved his superior officers’ sense of the perverse.

Domenica’s gaze hardened, and one eyebrow twitched. “Of course not, sir.” One corner of her lip turned up, and she added, “Care to join me, Fabe?”

Aw, crap. I should have known she’d do this. Fabian Stevens, you are a Class A, Grade One idiot.

He ran a hand through his dark hair, trying not to appear nervous while he thought his way out of this mess. He hated zero-G, and Dom knew it. The whole ordeal with the Ardanan parasite had just made it ten times worse. The simple task of putting the thing on the outside of the ship had been enough to send him to sickbay for vertigo. While he’d done zero-G work before and only been mildly queasy, having the entire universe spinning around him—in all three spatial dimensions, no less—was something that had never happened to him before Ardana. Sarjenka had said that vertigo could hit out of nowhere, spinning, nausea…. Stevens had to put a hand on his stomach as a physical reminder that he wasn’t really out there again. Not as though zero-G work would happen anytime soon, anyway. Conlon had damn near restricted him from any kind of EVA after he’d thrown up in the suit.

That sparked an idea that just might get him out of this mess. “Well, I could. However, I happen to know that Nancy just took all but one of the suits out of commission for routine inspection.”

The look on her face suggested only one thing: Conlon had just gone on Corsi’s List as a willing co-conspirator. Stevens would have to apologize to Nancy like he’d never done before.

That, of course, was entirely predicated on whether or not he survived the next hour.

That was when Corsi did something that he didn’t expect at all. “Computer, scan the ship’s exterior for signs of gold.”

“One instance found. A cylindrical item one centimeter in diameter and approximately one-half centimeter in height.”

A deliciously evil smile of victory spread across Corsi’s lips. “Computer, transport that item to this location, please.”

The shimmer of a transporter beam formed on the mess hall table. Slowly, Corsi’s new rank pip coalesced into being.

Gomez stared at the table and laughed. “Yeah, Corsi, you’ve been around engineers too long.”

The mess hall doors slid aside, allowing Bart Faulwell to finally make his way into the party. Fabian had been wondering why the ship’s resident linguist and cryptographer hadn’t made it to the party yet. The U.S.S. Elgin had just dropped him off from Earth that morning. Stevens couldn’t help but notice the pallor that even extended behind his roommate’s slowly regrowing facial hair. There was a haunted look to his eyes, one that Fabian knew meant something nasty had happened back on Earth, something he might want to be forgetting at that moment. Seeing his cue, Fabian put on his best party smile and walked over. “Oh great bearded translator of all languages arcane and otherwise! You’re just in time for the execution!”

Faulwell gave him a look that blatantly questioned Stevens’s sanity. “What execution?”

“Of the cake,” Gold said from somewhere behind Stevens, the old man’s tone suggesting Fabian’s joke might not have been a good idea. “Good to have you back, Faulwell,” the captain continued. “Everything go okay back on Earth?”

Bart nodded, offering no further information.

“Well,” Stevens said, pointing back toward the table, “have a piece of cake. There’s a bowl of double-whipped I’danian spice pudding there. And over there is a platter of Delvan fluff pastries.”

Bart cringed. “I hope Sarjenka’s got sickbay stocked with antacids. And speaking of stomach acid, where’s Tev?”

Stevens gave a snort of derision. Much as Tev was making an effort to get along better with everyone, Stevens still wasn’t a fan of having the big furry oaf in a social gathering, not one that he was throwing, at least. “He’s not on board. Remember those bombings on Andor a couple of weeks ago?”

“Yeah, it was all over the Federation News Service. The Shran memorial, the Wall of Heroes, you name it. If it was a location worth hitting, sounded like they hit it. Last I heard, the real surprise had been why they hit Therin Park, but, man did they raze everything they hit to the ground. Still haven’t caught the terrorists who claim to have done it.” Faulwell paused, his eyes widening. “Wait a second, Tev wasn’t there, was he?”

“We aren’t that lucky,” Fabian said with a shake of his head. “Turns out a friend of his from the Academy was in Therin Park, though. He was too close to one of the bombs when it went off. The Elgin escorted him to the funeral on Andor after they dropped you off.”

“Wow, I’ve got to admit, that’s a surprise.”

“What,” Stevens said, “that Therin Park was one of the places that got bombed? Everyone’s surprised by that, you just said so yourself.”

Faulwell shook his head. “No, that Tev actually had a friend at the Academy. Learn something new every day.”

A smile crept across Stevens’s face, slowly, carefully, not unlike the smile of someone plotting a rather cunning plan. “And we’re waiting for the right moment to break the news that Corsi now outranks him. That reaction alone should be worth its weight in gold-pressed latinum.” With a wink, all of the joviality returned as he added, “Go. Get some cake before it disappears. It’s Tarvokian pound cake, so you know it’s going to go fast.”

Before the party could really get going, however, Stevens heard Tony Shabalala’s voice over the comm. “Bridge to Abramowitz. Incoming message for you. It’s recorded, but it’s flagged as priority.”

Even two meters away, he could hear Carol groan. “Who’s it from?”

“Icaria Prime. Name attached is Inana Skanda.”

The “what the hell?” expression on Abramowitz’s face as she heard that was all Stevens needed to see. “Carol,” he said, “go. Take it. We’ll be here when you’re done.”

Now that he was somewhat certain that Dom wasn’t going to kill him for that stunt with the rank pip—well, as sure as anyone could be with her—he felt confident in making that statement.

“Hi, Carol. It’s Inana. Long time no see, huh? I know I’m probably the last person you expected to hear from, but I don’t know where else to go. Gabe, he…”

When the blonde in the message paused, frantically wringing her hands as she looked around where she sat, Carol Abramowitz stared at the computer screen, almost willing the recording to continue. She might as well get on with it. Whatever Inana wanted, it was probably already beyond the point where Carol—or anyone, for that matter—could possibly help. Inana Skanda was nothing if not a master of procrastination. How a layabout like her had even gotten an advanced degree—let alone gotten her claws into the likes of Gabriel Collins—was still something that mystified Carol.

Even after their brief flirtation had resulted in nothing more than friendship, Carol had always pegged Gabriel for someone too smart to fall for the first pretty blonde who crossed his path. She’d even tried to warn him about getting involved with Inana. What was that old phrase her grandmother had used once about a woman who was only out to get a man’s money? “Credit-digger”? Carol could even remember the rather expensive—and, in some instances, downright criminal to the olfactory sense—perfumes that Inana used to brag about having been imported from places in the Romulan Empire. Still, Carol drew some comfort from the fact that Gabriel continued doing well, as that was all that really mattered in her mind. Last time she had heard his name, it had been in the announcement of his tenure at Cambridge.

“Something’s not right with this dig. Gabe is getting obsessed with finding something the natives called the Krialta. I don’t know what it is, Carol. He won’t even tell me. You’ve known him as long as I have, maybe longer. Have you ever known him to get so obsessed with something that he ignores his wife?”

“What the—? Computer,” Carol said, “pause playback. Inquiry. Federation Archaeological Council Database. Gabriel Michael Collins, Professor of Archaeology, Cambridge University, Earth. Biographical data. Date of marriage to Inana Skanda.”

She didn’t have to wait long. “Stardate 53185.6.”

“How have they been married for over a year, and nobody even invited me to the wedding?” she asked, shaking her head.

“Please clarify inquiry.”

“No, computer, that wasn’t an inquiry. Resume playback.”

“He’s been talking about the Krialta night and day ever since we found this ancient temple here. At least, I think it’s a temple, anyway. I’ve been combing through his notes, and the best I can tell is that he thinks this Krialta is some kind of weapon. I can’t find out anything more than that. Whenever I ask him, he just mumbles something about power. And lots of it.

“Things are getting weird. I don’t know what it is, but none of our computers are working right. Hopefully, this message will send. Gabe’s recordings are getting corrupted. Since you work with—”

Gomez’s voice over the comm cut through Inana’s verbal meanderings. “Senior staff report to the observation lounge. Gomez out.”

“Just as she finally wanders over to the point. Computer, pause playback. Hold message.”

When Carol arrived in the observation lounge, she had just enough time to take her usual seat beside Bart Faulwell before Captain Gold spoke. “Folks, we’ve got a weird one here,” he said. “Care to bring them up to speed, Gomez?”

Gomez leaned forward, her dark brow furrowing. “An archaeological expedition out on Icaria Prime has reported some really strange things happening. Nothing came up on their initial scans of the planet, but now their computer systems are crashing, portable drives are erasing themselves, tricorders are getting readings that violate the laws of physics, and that’s just the beginning. A three-person contingent from the Enterprise is on-site, since the dig is close to Lethean territory. Also, apparently Captain Picard wanted to see the dig personally. The message Starfleet Command received, however, was from Lieutenant Commander Data.”

Carol tried not to groan. Of course Picard would be involved. Just what they needed, a Starfleet captain playing archaeologist.

“They’ve got Data,” Stevens said, “what do they need us for? What about the Enterprise?” Carol couldn’t help but notice that he sounded as though he was taking the disruption to his party as a personal affront.

Gomez shot him a silencing look. “I was getting to that. They need a more specialized engineering team than the Enterprise carries. Data’s been studying these anomalies for the past two weeks. The only connection he’s been able to make so far is that they might be related to some artifacts the dig team found in a remote area of the planet shortly before the problems began, but he can’t get any readings that would back that up.”

“The kicker is their situation’s getting worse,” Gold added. “If nobody can trust their own equipment, then the odds are pretty good that their investigation isn’t going to turn up anything at all. I’m not sure we can even trust Data to not be affected by this.”

“And that’s not all,” Gomez said. “Sarjenka, according to the report, there’s something else that will require your attention. Five people on the dig are reporting sensory and auditory hallucinations. They’re also reporting severe migraines, including Captain Picard. Do you think they could be related?”

Sarjenka rubbed a long, red finger against the bridge of her nose. “It’s not impossible. There could be something in the atmosphere that’s a new migraine trigger for humans. I haven’t read his history yet, but just from what we learned at the Academy of what he’s done? His brain chemistry could have changed just enough over the years for a migraine trigger to take hold. There are too many variables for me to even speculate on right now without examining the patient.”

Gomez smiled, and Carol noticed quite a bit of pride in that look. “I’ve sent the reports Data filed to sickbay for you to go over, as well as the medical histories of everyone on the dig that we could get.”

Carol glanced over at the Dreman—who seemed ridiculously young at that moment—and gave her a half-smile. “First mission as CMO and you’re stuck with the Federation Living Legends. Trial by fire, huh?”

After Nancy Conlon had mentioned Sarjenka’s trouble feeling as though she’d fit in there, Carol had made every attempt she could to alleviate that problem. But Carol was an anthropologist, not a psychologist. She could only do so much.

So far, though, her attempts seemed to be helping.

Sarjenka returned the half-smile, but there was a tinge of nervousness in her eyes that even Abramowitz couldn’t miss, although the Dreman tried to hide it. “Fortunately,” she said, glancing in the captain’s direction, “I’ve been through worse.”

Gomez said, “The Enterprise is stuck in the middle of a relief mission to Sahu in the Delta Eridani system, and can’t be pulled away from it right now to assist. Knowing Commander Riker, he may show up anyway. Don’t expect it, though. This is all on us. Domenica, your friend Christine Vale is with Captain Picard and Data. But the Enterprise didn’t anticipate needing any more personnel on-site than that. You’ll need to put together a security team. There were reports of looting of the dig site by natives. Nothing’s shown up on the black market yet, so there aren’t any solid leads to work with, but if anyone can find them…”

Corsi nodded, “Understood. I’ll take Vinx down—he could use the field experience.”

“Bart, how’s your Grethar?” Gomez leaned forward, her gaze locking on Abramowitz and Faulwell. “According to Data’s report, the dig team thinks this site was Gretharan, but the translation matrix they’ve got isn’t quite holding up. You’ll both be working with the dig team to figure out what they’ve found so far and whether or not any of it’s related to the problem.”

Gretharans? Damn, there’s a name I haven’t heard since school. Carol’s brow furrowed. “Gretharans weren’t that advanced when the Letheans wiped them out three centuries ago. Data really thinks this is related to their tech?”

“Data isn’t sure what to think. But we need to make sure this goes off without the Letheans getting too involved.”

“You’re not kidding.” Turning toward Faulwell, Carol said in an oft-practiced deadpan, “An anthropologist and a linguist walk into a dig…”

Bart chuckled, and then said, “I’ll get my references together to bring down. Though, if they knew it was Gretharan going in, I’m sure they’ve probably got all the same texts.”

“Maybe they just need another set of eyes. You know how that goes.” Turning back to Gomez, Carol said, “Commander, is this the dig being led by Gabriel Collins?”

The surprised look on Gomez’s face told Carol everything she needed to know.

“Then I know two people on the team. Gabe Collins is an old friend and was a classmate of mine, as is his wife. I got a message from her today saying Gabe was looking for something called a Krialta. I haven’t had a chance to cross-reference the Federation Archaeological Council’s database yet, but it may be related to this.”

Gold propped his elbows on the armrests of his chair, steepling his fingers in front of his lips. “Why would she have contacted you on this?”

“She knows I’m assigned to the da Vinci, sir. I’ll bet she thought that with my connections, I might be able to get them help. She probably didn’t anticipate Data contacting headquarters. Wouldn’t be out of character for what I remember of her, I’m afraid. Thinking past the end of her nose requires too much work.”

Gold’s lips pursed as he apparently mulled over the new information. Finally, he said, “We’ll be there in two days. You’ll all have the reports that Data filed. If you can find anything at all that might shine a little light on what we’re dealing with here, let Gomez know immediately. Dismissed, everyone.”

CHAPTER 2

Sarjenka knew she’d spent too long staring at Captain Picard’s medical history when her head hurt from trying to make sense of everything that had happened to him over his years of service. It had taken reading the file through three times before she felt she could comprehend everything enough to even begin trying to research what was going on now.

From the report, Picard hadn’t been the only one on the dig reporting migraine-like headaches, though. Commander Gomez had been right. There were four other reports of the migraines and hallucinations, none of which were alleviated by the traditional modern treatments. Data had, however, made sure to note that something called yenara-root tea was a native remedy for a headache, and had been working quite well, but the chemical composition that he’d also reported was vastly intriguing—especially the high atropine levels. “Belladonna,” she muttered to herself. “This yenara root isn’t that different. They’re making tea from the leaves? How is this not killing them?”

“Hey, Doc?”

Sarjenka jumped at the voice. She hadn’t even heard the sickbay doors open. She looked up from the screen to see Vance Hawkins standing in the doorway to her office, a strained look on his face and his right arm hanging limply at his side. “What have you done this time?” she asked, pulling herself out from behind the desk. “On second thought, I don’t think I want to know.”

She led him toward a biobed, running her tricorder over the arm. Sure enough, he’d dislocated his shoulder.

Again.

“Vance, how many times have I told you that Captain Gold has strict orders about use of the hololab? It’s a laboratory, not a holodeck. The Mount Seleya hang-gliding simulation was supposed to have been wiped from the computer,” she said. Commander Gomez had already removed it once, after the last time he’d managed to use the hololab for his own devices. This hang-gliding thing was a relatively new fixation of his, and one that Sarjenka knew was going to get him in deep trouble one of these days if Carol didn’t try to rein him in. However, in light of the events on Icaria Prime, she couldn’t deny that Carol probably had more pressing things on her mind. Remembering the tone her mother had long ago used whenever she was irritated with her father for doing something particularly stupid, she said, “Let’s just ignore for a moment that we have Vulcan crew members who might consider it sacrilegious, okay? I’ll take care of it this time, but if I see you in here again, I’m telling Captain Gold that you’re abusing the hololab.” Bargaining was also a tactic that had always seemed to work in her childhood, and she hoped that it would have the same effect on humans.

A part of her wanted to look up the distance-learning catalog for Starfleet Medical, just to see if psychiatry courses were an option. Around the da Vinci, she was growing increasingly convinced that that particular skill set couldn’t hurt.

It didn’t take long for her to reset Vance’s shoulder, although she gave him a bit of pain medication before she did it to make the process easier for him to take. When she considered how many times he’d been injured since coming onto the da Vinci, she realized that his pain tolerance must have been enormous. Still, it couldn’t hurt to help him along a bit. Always ensure the patient’s comfort first.

When said patient was back out the door to whatever his next misadventure would be—promising all the way that he would delete the program and all of the backups—she turned her attention back to Lieutenant Commander Data’s reports. Sarjenka shook her head in disbelief at some of the things in there: migraines; cases bordering on dementia in people who were far, far too young to have such symptoms. The auditory and sensory hallucinations she could write off to the tea, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was going wrong with these people’s brains. But what?

She tapped her combadge. “Sarjenka to the bridge.”

Anthony Shabalala’s voice responded, “Bridge here. Yeah, Doc?”

“Contact the dig team if we can, please. Tell them to stop using the yenara-root tea for the headaches. It may be doing them more harm than good.”

“Will do.”

“Thank you, Anthony. Sarjenka out.”

She rubbed her long, red fingers over her eyes, a very human habit she knew she’d picked up from her freshman-year roommate in the Academy, but it didn’t change the fact that it felt good. I wanted a challenge, not a differential diagnosis that Traiaka would only inflict upon her enemies. “Computer,” she said, after walking over to the replicator and getting a raktajino, “call up all of the recent studies from Starfleet Medical on organic types of electrical activity and interference with humanoid brain function. Include electromagnetic and geologic interference wherever possible. I’ve got a lot of reading to do.”

Jean-Luc Picard felt as though his skull was being impaled. Still, he pushed onward, studying the small stone sculpture that he was cleaning in his hand. If he remembered his history correctly, it appeared to be of the earliest High Gretharan period, from the time before the wars with the Letheans. Their artisans had been heavily inspired by nature at that point, and this piece was right in line with that trend. It was a near-perfect representation of the race’s protohumanoid, low-gravity–influenced physiology: long, slender limbs; a compact, yet well-toned torso; a strong, swanlike neck that some of the women he’d known in his time would’ve loved to have; and a skull that housed an oversized—yet supportable thanks to the naturally-occurring muscle tone in that neck—brain.

There was something serene, almost calming about the sculpture. It had been carved out of a rock that bore a strong resemblance to jade, only this stone was brilliant teal blue, almost like an amalgam of sapphire and emerald.

As he took the small cleaning brush over the lower portion of the sculpture, something about his headache changed. The spike that had been trying to ram its way through his right eye was beginning to move deeper into his skull, until finally, it felt as though it were somewhere in the exact center of his brain, radiating outward in small lightning bolts of pain.

Perhaps it’s time to have some tea and lie down for a bit.

The tea had helped before, but this headache, it was different than the others. He briefly wondered if it might be possible to contact Beverly to see what she thought, but that idea was dismissed as he stepped outside of the tent he’d been using…

And stopped cold in his tracks.

Nella Daren stood in front of him, a smile on her angelic features. Her sable-brown hair cascaded in waves over her shoulders, and she was decidedly out of uniform. The white dress she wore fluttered in the gentle breeze that was working its way through the site. “Jean-Luc,” she said, her voice just as wonderfully soft and sensual as he remembered.

“Nella? What are you doing here?”

A soft smile appeared. “I’m with you wherever you go, Jean-Luc.”

Alarm bells began ringing in Picard’s mind, as he knew full well that Nella had been transferred to the Havana years ago. If he remembered correctly, that ship was still assisting with the repatriation and reconstruction efforts on Cardassia Prime. “All right,” he began, his voice full of caution, “why have you waited until now to tell me you were here?”

“The time wasn’t right until now.” Nella reached out and ran her fingers over his cheek. There was a twinge of pain in the side of his skull that she touched, but Picard simply closed his eyes in response, enjoying it for as long as he could. “You’re more at peace at this moment than I think I’ve ever seen you, Jean-Luc.”

He couldn’t deny that she was right. Archaeology had been a passion for as long as he could remember, almost before the notion of captaining a starship had entered into the equation of his life. The pure, simple task of brushing an artifact had been therapeutic. Not that exploring the galaxy didn’t have its benefits as well. Finding a new nebula or star cluster could be just as enjoyable as discovering a new bit of pottery from an extinct civilization. There was just something that intrigued him so much more about the past.

“You could stay here, you know.”

“What?” Picard opened his eyes. “Nella, you know the Enterprise—”

“Yes, and is she not surviving without her captain now?”

Damn her, but she had a point. Picard tried to back away from her touch, but his feet wouldn’t listen. “This was merely a short leave,” he began. “You’re talking about letting go of the Enterprise permanently.”

“That short leave was supposed to be over how long ago?” she asked, one eyebrow raised. “Jean-Luc, Riker’s been ready to take command for years. You know that. Let him. Stay here. With me. You can dig and dust and scrape and find all of the little trinkets you want, and we can have our duets again. You can be happy here, Jean-Luc. I know it.”

He’d missed their duets—more than he cared to admit. Nella’s flair on the piano had matched his Ressikan flute like nothing he’d experienced before or since.

The longer he was in Nella’s presence, the less the alarms that he’d worried about moments before concerned him. When she walked back toward the camp, he followed, leaving the small jade carving on the ground, forgotten beside his tools. It was so good to be at peace again.

“It what?”

Carol Abramowitz stared at the computer screen in her quarters. The Federation Archaeological Database only had anecdotal references for this Krialta that Gabriel was so interested in. But those anecdotes—oh, those anecdotes didn’t leave her with a good feeling at all. “Gabe, what have you gotten yourself into?” she whispered.

Her door chime rang. “Who is it?”

“It’s me, Carol,” Bart Faulwell said.

“Come in.”

The door slid aside, allowing the linguist entrance.

“Bart,” she said, still staring at the screen, “you’re never going to believe this.”

Faulwell laughed. “Now there’s a line to come in on. What’d you find?”

Carol turned her computer screen around to face him. “Now I know why Inana was worried about Gabe’s incessant talk of power. If this thing really exists, we’ve got the mother of all defense machinery on our hands.”

Bart leaned forward, placing his palms on her desk as he read. Carol could see his skin turning paler by the line. “We should tell Sonya about this.”

Carol shook her head. “I don’t know. All we’ve got here are stories passed down through generations, and vague references from what few digs have been allowed in the area. For all we know, it could be nothing more than the Gretharan version of Excalibur or the Holy Grail.”

“Or both,” Bart said, standing. “That’s a pretty large folkloric presence for something that doesn’t actually exist, isn’t it? Looks like this might be a bit more than legend after all.”

Tapping his combadge, Bart said, “Faulwell to Gomez.”

“Gomez here. What’s up?”

“Could you join us in Carol’s quarters, please? The archaeological database had some interesting things you should see.”

“I’ll be right there, Gomez out.”

“A what?”

Carol was beginning to wish that Bart hadn’t called Gomez when he did, as she’d immediately dragged them off to personally update Captain Gold. As they’d all found positions around the captain’s ready room—with Carol and Bart front and center, of course—she’d have liked to have had something a bit more concrete to work with before Gomez called them all to account. Gold was leaning back in his chair, seeming to take it all in without giving any actual indication of his emotional state.

At least, no indication that Carol had yet learned to read.

“Sir,” Carol said, “I know that pretty much all we have to go on is legend and hearsay right now, but with most folklore, usually there’s a nugget of truth in there somewhere. There is evidence in the database pointing toward the Gretharans trying to create a weapon that would help their people battle the Lethean telepathic attacks late in the war. That’s the only thing we can be sure of right now.”

“They were trying to create it? No evidence that they actually did?”

Carol shook her head. “I’ve made formal requests to the Lethean government through every channel I can think of for more data. But we all know how—obstinate—the Letheans can be when they want to.”

“Downright pains in the tuchas is more like it.” Gold pulled himself out of his chair. “So, let’s move forward with the assumption that the Gretharans succeeded. How do you create a machine that fights telepaths like the Letheans? Especially with Gretharan technology?”

“Best guess? Bring them down to your level of the playing field,” Gomez said. “Find a way to negate the Lethean’s abilities.”

Gold reached over to his computer screen, his fingers playing across the screen as he worked. “How do you negate a telepathic attack that’s usually fatal? The only record we have of someone surviving a Lethean attack was someone who cured himself.” With a glance up to Gomez, he added, “and that was a genetically-enhanced victim.”

“Dr. Bashir?”

Gold nodded. “How many other genetically-enhanced people do you know?”

Gomez practically slapped her combadge. “Gomez to Sarjenka.”

“Sarjenka here. What can I do for you, Commander?”

Sonya smiled. “More like what we can do for you, Doctor. Contact Deep Space 9 and request all of the records Dr. Julian Bashir has on a Lethean who attacked him about six or so years ago. See what he can tell you about them.”

“Will do, Commander. Any specific questions you’d recommend I ask?”

“How he fought the telepathic attack and won. Gomez out.”

“Chief medical officer to the bridge immediately.”

The sound of Anthony Shabalala’s voice woke Sarjenka from the soundest slumber she could recall since graduation—sound, but perhaps not entirely comfortable. As she lifted her head from the reports from Deep Space 9 that littered the surface of the desk in her office, it sank in that she’d been paged. Grabbing a quick mug of raktajino from the replicator, she took a long drink and then tapped her combadge as she left sickbay. “On my way.”

When she reached the bridge, the now-empty mug of raktajino still in her hand, Domenica, Sonya, and Captain Gold were all standing at the rear of the bridge, and an audio message cycled back to the beginning.

“Vale to da Vinci. We have an urgent situation. A group of looters, approximately a dozen in all, attacked the camp last night. We got them into a firefight, but there were too many of them and we had to retreat. Captain Picard took some fire in the shootout, as did Heyerdahl, Davis, and Cunningham from the dig team. The local medic only has a couple of beds, and doesn’t have the capacity to handle so many projectile weapon injuries. The captain is also saying something about Nella Daren. Data said she was the captain’s girlfriend for a few weeks about eight years ago. I don’t know if that’s related to anything, but couldn’t hurt to pass it on. Please advise on your ETA. Vale out.”

Three sets of eyes turned to Sarjenka as the message ended. The Dreman stared down at the floor for a moment, mentally assessing Dr. Lense’s sickbay.

Your sickbay. It’s yours now. Vance came to you for help, not Dr. Lense. It’s your sickbay, and a Federation legend is going to need you. Pull it together, Sarj.

It didn’t help that she’d talked to Dr. Bashir before she fell asleep, and he had just talked to Dr. Lense on Earth, though he was coy as to the nature of his conversations with her. Of course, Sarjenka had asked how her former supervisor was doing, and Bashir said he thought she was doing very well, under the circumstances, and only then did Sarjenka learn that Lense’s mother had died. She wished that Lense had contacted the da Vinci and let them know—but quickly dismissed that notion as out of character. Though Bart, at least, could have said something…

Forcing herself back to the present, Sarjenka said, “I could handle all of them in sickbay, but if they have simple projectile wounds, it may be easier to just treat them on the surface.”

Sarjenka knew she’d screwed up as soon as the words left her mouth, which was made worse by Sonya saying, “Don’t underestimate projectile weapons.”

Never dismiss an injury, Sarjenka admonished herself. You never know how bad it will really be. Sonya, Fabian, and Vance had nearly died from projectile weapons fire on Teneb last year. “If their injuries do prove to be life-threatening, we will need to move them to the ship as quickly as possible.” With a nod toward Domenica, she added, “Should I assume your friend Vale would have informed us if there were such a possibility?”

“She wouldn’t have been assigned to Enterprise if she were stupid enough not to, so it’s a good bet. Permission to add Konya to the away team, sir?”

“Granted.”

Sarjenka realized that she wasn’t going to be able to do all of this alone, and she was becoming less and less married to the notion of treating the wounded on the surface. She’d been studying more of the quick-fix real-world field triage situations like the one she’d done back on Stratos, but she still felt a little more secure in having another set of hands and another medical mind that she could trust around. “I’ll bring Dantas down with us. She can help with the triage and any surgical procedures that might be necessary before we can transport any of the injured or sick to the ship.”

Sonya held up a hand. “But what about the system failures the dig team reported? We can’t have them affecting the medical equipment, too. Data’s report wasn’t that clear, but it sounded like an electrical or maybe even geomagnetic disturbance. I wonder…” The commander’s fingers ran over the computer’s touchscreen. “A phase discriminator might help slow down whatever this is, but I can’t guarantee anything without knowing more about what’s going on down there. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before, but Data’s readings were taken within range of whatever is influencing the technology. He may not be immune to it himself. The information he sent may not even be reliable.”

Captain Gold pursed his lips, then nodded. “Get the phase discriminator ready. Much rather you have it and not need it than the other way around. Sarjenka, is there any way you can think of that this might be organic in origin?”

Sarjenka shook her head. “No, sir. I know of no organism that would affect technology like that. Unless, perhaps, Commander Gomez is correct and it’s geomagnetic in origin?”

Gold raised an eyebrow at Sonya, who said, “Just checked that. The planet’s geologically stable. Magnetosphere looks good. Radiation levels on the surface are within tolerable levels. Every reading I’m getting is in the range where our technology should still function normally.”

“So it’s likely to be artificial,” the captain said. “Maybe this Krialta that Abramowitz’s friend was looking for?”

“From what we have right now,” Sonya said, “I’d have to say the probability of that is high. That assessment may change when we get to the surface.”

Captain Gold’s back straightened. “It’s enough to work with. Be ready to go as soon as we enter orbit.”

Sarjenka nodded, hearing the dismissal in the captain’s tone. Turning on her heel, she headed back toward the turbolift. Her mind was whirling over the possibilities. Yet, Vale’s report of Picard’s memory of his old girlfriend was inexplicably stuck in her mind.

It could just be nostalgia. How many times have you thought of Ekaran in the last five years? But if there’s something operating on the technology in the area, then why couldn’t it be operating on the people?

As the turbolift returned her to sickbay, she made a mental note to download everything the computer’s database had on the human memory system into a padd before they left. She doubted there was any way to shield it from whatever was affecting the dig’s systems, but on a ship full of engineers, there had to be a way to at least try.

CHAPTER 3

When Carol walked into the transporter room to beam down to the surface, she was greeted by the look of annoyance on Sonya Gomez’s features.

“What’s wrong?” Abramowitz asked, a knot of dread slowly starting to form in her stomach. When Gomez was frustrated, it was usually not a good thing.

Gomez gave the transporter console a look verging on actual anger. “We can’t get a fix on the dig team’s location.”

Looking just as frustrated, Chief Poynter added, “It’s like there’s something down there deliberately blocking transporters.”

Walking over to the nearest computer terminal, Gomez said, “Computer, scan the planet’s surface for any of the known substances that could be interfering with transport.”

After a brief pause, the computer replied, “No indications of any substances known to interfere with transporter function.”

“Okay.” Gomez took a deep breath. “How about any energy fields known to disrupt transporter function?”

“There is a field resembling thoron radiation approximately three square kilometers in size in the northeast quadrant of the southern continent.”

“Precisely where the dig team is. Now where did that come from?” Gomez said in a voice filled with irritation. “Computer, can you estimate how long the field has been there?”

“Insufficient data to make an estimate.”

“You said ‘resembling.’ Computer, please clarify.”

“The field emission strength and particle density resemble a thoron radiation field.” Carol could feel the “but” coming. “However, sensors do not indicate presence of thoron radiation.”

“That’s going to be a problem. Theorize. Probability of danger to human life?”

“There is a fifty percent chance of danger with extended exposure. Due to the difference in the radiation field composition, sensors are unable to allow more specific estimate.”

“So it’s a coin toss?” Carol asked.

“Sounds like it.” Gomez pursed her lips, staring intently at the computer screen. Carol could understand the frustration. Sonya’s history with Captain Picard was well known on the da Vinci. After the hot chocolate incident of her youth, she was fairly certain that Sonya would welcome the notion of leading the team that rode to the rescue of Captain Picard and the others.

Well, in her shoes, Carol would have probably welcomed the notion, but she’d long since learned that what she’d do and what the others on the da Vinci would do weren’t always the same thing.

Corsi—phaser rifle in hand—took a step forward. “So, we take a shuttle or two, park along the perimeter of this field, and then get everyone in it out of there.”

“I’m trying to see if we can even do that,” Gomez said. “This wasn’t in any of Data’s notes, so either he didn’t know about it, or it’s new, or—and this is the really bad part—it’s affecting him as well. If that’s the case, we can’t trust anything he sent us. My guess is the field’s probably contributing to whatever is causing the dig team’s systems to fail. It’s thoron radiation, but it’s not. That can mess up sensors—” She eyed Corsi’s rifle. “—even our weapons. If we take a shuttle, there’s no guarantee we’ll be immune to the technical problems. If there are serious injuries down there, we may need to be able to get out quickly.”

Corsi deadpanned, “Okay, who here really thought we would be immune to the technical problems walking into this?” When nobody raised a hand, she continued, “What about beaming down to the edge of the field? Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had to hike to get to a mission site.”

Poynter spoke suddenly, while looking at the computer screen, her eyes as wide as saucers. “It just grew.”

Gomez and Corsi both said, “What?”

Poynter indicated a spot on the computer monitor. When Carol came around to look, she saw an oddly shaped blotch on the scan of the planet’s surface, almost as though someone had thrown translucent red paint at the monitor. “That’s the field?”

“Yes,” Poynter said. “That’s what it looked like a few seconds ago.”

“Computer,” Gomez said, “overlay the new scan of the energy field. Use a different color for representation.”

A larger orange blob sat ominously over the red blotch. “It’s not even close to the same shape,” Carol said. “The field isn’t expanding equally.”

“No, it isn’t.” Gomez didn’t look pleased. “Unless we see more growth in the field, there’s no way to predict any kind of pattern from that.”

Sarjenka spoke up at that point. Carol couldn’t even remember when the kid had come in. “We need to get everyone out and shut this down before it reaches the major cities. Sounds like there’s a chance of this encompassing the planet.”

Carol had to admit, that was a very distinct possibility. Leave it to the kid who’s seen her entire planet taken over to think of that one.

“Okay, that’s settled, then,” Gomez said. “We get the dig team out, then we figure out how to shut whatever’s generating this field down. We’ll take both shuttles, and bring both phase discriminators and pattern enhancers for evacuation. That way we can monitor the field for expansion as we approach. Pack the Kwolek with emergency rations and supplies while we’re at it, just in case. Land one kilometer outside the nearest field boundary to the dig team. If we can manage to get far enough outside the field to account for another round of expansion, we should be able to get the people within the field’s perimeter evacuated. Then we can try to save the planet from this thing.”

Corsi hit her combadge. “Corsi to Captain Gold.”

“Gold here.”

“Captain, we may need to evacuate some people from within a field area of the northeast part of the southern continent.”

“Gomez here, sir. Something strange is going on. We’ve got something the computer is identifying as resembling thoron radiation, and it’s spreading in an unpredictable pattern. Our plan is to get as many people as possible out of the area, and then try to shut whatever this thing is down. Evacuation may be necessary as a last resort, sir.”

“We’ll get the spare cots out. You take care of what needs to be done, Gomez. Gold out.”

Carol noticed that everyone in the room seemed to take a deep breath at that.

“Okay,” Gomez finally said, breaking the silence. “Make sure as many pattern enhancers as will fit are on the Kwolek. Grab all of the phase discriminators we have. I want as much technical backup as we can get. Let’s move.”

In the eight plus years since Sarjenka had first encountered the Federation, she couldn’t recall a shuttle ride that had been quite as uncomfortable. She and Dantas were packed into the back of the Kwolek, which was also loaded—not to its weight limit, but as close as they could get it—with equipment, rations, medical supplies or diagnostics in the event of a tricorder failure, everything the two of them could think of to bring. As Dantas sat on the bench opposite her, Sarjenka couldn’t help but wonder if she’d made the right choice. This wasn’t just any member of Starfleet she was being sent to assist. It was the captain of one of the Federation’s most famous flagships. Everything she did would be examined under a magnifying glass by the brass back on Earth, and Traiaka help her if she made even the slightest error. But had she really had any choice in the matter?

Sure, she might have been able to argue that when it came down to it, in an ideal world, one injured person should never be given preferential treatment over another purely because of status. She’d learned all too well over her life that status was usually just something people wore like clothing, and those people were often the ones who hadn’t really done anything to earn such prestige.

Not Jean-Luc Picard, though. He’d been the one to save her people. One of the first things she’d done upon reaching Starfleet Academy was try to access the official record of what happened to her planet all those years before. It had been Picard’s report, one that had cited a distress call that his Enterprise had answered, one that had told her all she needed to know about the real saviors of her world. Her people had known nothing about a distress call, but once Sarjenka had informed Guardian Liankataka of what had truly happened to their world, and how Picard had stepped in to assist them, he had been elevated to a status that only Admiral Jameson Tucker had held before. Both men had answered Dreman requests for help, but only one had received no accolade on her world. As much as she’d always respected Tucker, the more she read about Picard, the more she held him in equally high regard.

And now she would be the one to face him, possibly the first Dreman to do so in twelve years. She reached into her pocket for her music stone, taking slow, deep breaths and allowing its familiar lilting melody to calm her jittery nerves.

Dantas leaned forward, hearing the stone’s melody and, judging by the expression on her features, liking it. “What’s that?” she asked.

Sarjenka looked down at the stone, almost embarrassed at being caught with it. “Something I’ve had since I was a child. I don’t know what it is, really. I just woke up with it one morning. Nobody could tell me what it was; they’d never seen anything like it. I call it my music stone.”

“May I?” the medtech asked, holding out her hand. Sarjenka dropped the stone into Dantas’s palm, where it began singing a darker, more haunting melody. She held it up close, seeming to ignore its song. “Wow. I haven’t seen one of these in years.”

Sarjenka’s ears perked. “You know what it is?”

“Yep,” Dantas said with a nod. “What you’ve got there is an Elanian singer stone. My grandmother used to keep one in the curio cabinet. She’d only ever let me hold it on my birthday. The sound that one used to make was just like the one this is making now.”

“Elanian singer stone?” Sarjenka asked. Something tickled the back of her mind. “Why is that familiar?”

Dantas shrugged just as the shuttle bucked from a bit of turbulence. “Don’t know. Maybe you read about one in the Academy, and just didn’t make the connection? Didn’t you say that your planet was invaded once? Maybe they brought it with them.”

Sarjenka shook her head. “No. I had this long before the Exiles came to my world. Maybe now that I know what it’s called, I can figure out how I got it.”

A smirk crossed her assistant’s face. “For all you know, it fell out of the sky.”

Taking a deep breath, Sarjenka tried to take the teasing appropriately. The dressing-down she’d received the first time she responded poorly to a sarcastic remark still stung. Not that the person who’d made the remark had fared any better—but that was the Academy, this was different.

“For all I know,” she said, staring at Dantas, “it came from the Enterprise herself. Now that we’ve finished dissecting my childhood keepsake, can we please get back to determining our plan of attack for this mission?”

Dantas nodded, a strand of dark hair falling in her face. “You’re really starting to pick up. Good job.”

“Thank you, I think.” Sarjenka turned her attention to the shielded—she hoped—padd with data on the effects of geomagnetic fields on the human brain, and once again considered that distance-learning course in psychiatry.

When they finally worked their way from the landing site through the lush, tropical vegetation to the dig site, Carol was pleased that Gabriel managed to come out and greet them. She could recall moments when it had been difficult to get him away from his work, even for something as critical as a meal when he hadn’t eaten for almost a day.

That happiness turned to concern, though, when she got a good look at the worried—no, she reclassified that to shell-shocked—expression on his features. Eyes that had once been a bright, emerald green were shadowed to the point where if she hadn’t known him for so many years, she might not have been able to see it. Tiny crow’s feet were beginning to form at the corners of those eyes, and they’d brought deep, dark circles along with them just to make themselves feel at home. His dark hair was an absolute mess, although that wasn’t unusual. He’d always been prone to running his hands through his hair while he thought. From the looks of it, he’d been doing a whole lot of thinking recently.

Almost on cue, the fingers of his right hand went to his head. When he lowered his arm, only the placement of the rumples had changed. Old habits die hard.

“Gabe?” she asked. “When was the last time you slept?”

“Huh?” he said, shaking himself out of whatever thought had occupied his brain.

Carol tried her best not to laugh. “So, how was it on Crelmac?”

“Nice,” he said with a half-hearted smile. “Weather’s great. The high priest sends his regards.”

It was an old joke, one they’d used so many times on each other in college that it had become habit. This time, however, it caused the knot of concern in her stomach to grow into something far more sinister. He’d always told her that she knew him better than anyone, and seeing him distractedly reacting to things was more suggestive than anything else to her of how much this was stressing him—and how much he was trying to hide it.

Gabriel’s entire demeanor changed for a moment, softening into the old Gabe she’d known all those years ago. “Carol,” he said, as though he’d finally realized she was there. “How have you been?”

That was the point where Corsi decided to clear her throat. Like I needed a reminder that they’re there. She’d have rolled her eyes, if she weren’t sure old Core-Breach would have found out about it somehow and inflicted damage upon her at a time of Corsi’s choosing. Fabian may have mellowed her a bit, but Vance had told Carol far more stories of Corsi’s temper than half the crew probably knew. Shaking her own head, she dragged herself back to the conversation. “There’ll be plenty of time to catch up later. We got a report that you guys were in some strange trouble down here? Is Captain Picard around? We’d like to talk to him as soon as possible. We think an evac may be in order.”

Gabriel’s expression fell. “His tent is the black one over next to mine, but I don’t think you’ll get much from him.”

“Really?” Sarjenka asked, stepping into the conversation. “What’s wrong?”

Carol realized that her manners had apparently flown out the airlock when she’d seen Gabriel again. “I’m sorry, Gabe. This is Dr. Sarjenka, our chief medical officer. That’s Dantas Falcão, her assistant. The blonde back there is our security chief Commander Domenica Corsi. Makk Vinx and Rennan Konya, also security. Bart Faulwell here is our crack linguist and cryptographer. He and I are here to help with this artifact Inana said you’re looking for. And last, but certainly not least, Commander Sonya Gomez, the head of our S.C.E. contingent, resident genius, and first officer of the da Vinci. She’s here to help figure out what’s going wrong with the equipment.”

Gabriel waved a feeble hand at all of them. “Hi. Welcome to the hellhole.”

“Hellhole?” Corsi asked. Carol couldn’t help but notice that there was an anticipatory tone in the security chief’s voice. Almost as though she were looking forward to running into trouble. “Maybe we should begin with you instead of Captain Picard, Professor Collins.”

“It’s a joke, Corsi,” Carol said, trying not to sound as irritated as she felt with the woman. Gabriel’s sense of humor had always been perched precariously on the edge of normal. At that moment, Carol couldn’t think of a single non-academic who ever got his jokes. To help smooth the situation along, she asked, “Gabe, how many digs have you nicknamed that after a few months?”

Gabriel’s brow furrowed. “Don’t know. How many have I actually been on?”

“If you’ve lost count,” she said with a grin, “we’re in more trouble than we thought.”

Gomez stepped into the conversation, “Professor Collins—”

“Call me Gabriel, please,” he said, his expression softening. “The only people I make call me ‘Professor’ are my students.”

Carol tried hard not to notice that the charm had switched on once again. It had always been instinctive for him. She’d suspected that even marriage wouldn’t be able to shut off his natural ability to charm the cassock from a Vulcan priestess, but she’d also never expected to be proven right.

Gomez, at least, didn’t seem to be falling prey to it. She gave a gentle nod and said, as friendly as Carol had ever heard her be, “All right then, Gabriel. What, exactly, are the problems you’ve been noticing? We were informed of equipment malfunctioning as well as an illness affecting members of your dig team. Our sensors picked up a field resembling thoron radiation before we landed. This much exposure shouldn’t be that harmful, but we’re prepared to evacuate your entire crew if necessary.”

Gabe looked as though someone had put raw sewage into his dinner. “Evacuate? When we’re this close to the objective? I’m afraid not, Commander.”

“We were afraid you’d say that,” Gomez said, turning toward Corsi. “Commander, I could use your team’s help setting up the phase discriminators and the pattern enhancers.”

Corsi gave a curt nod. “You’ve got it.”

Sarjenka shifted the medkit on her shoulder. “There still appears to be time, Gabriel. And we might be able to buy more of it. If there is anyone on your team who needs medical assistance, please tell us where to find them.”

Gabriel waved a hand toward a large, black, dome-shaped tent a few meters behind where they stood. “Probably should start with Jean-Luc. He’s in there. Data’s probably with him. I don’t think he’s left there since the captain went down during dinner the other night.”

“Could you please clarify what you mean by ‘went down’?” Sarjenka asked.

“Passed out,” he said. “Said he had a pounding headache, went to get some yenara-root tea, and we haven’t seen him conscious again since. Honestly, we’re all worried about him. Nobody wants to go near the tent; they think he’s got something contagious. I’ve got four others with varying degrees of his condition. Probably just a matter of time before it gets to the rest of us.”

Sarjenka shot a look back at Falcão. The two of them pulled breather masks out of their kits, made sure they were over their mouths and noses securely, and headed toward the tent Gabriel had pointed out. The kid’s concern over whether or not the rest of the team should do the same thing was written all over what Carol could see of Sarjenka’s features.

Carol’s stomach knotted at the notion of what losing Picard might do to the crew of the Enterprise. She didn’t have much use for captains playing archeologist, and Carol had disagreed with several of Picard’s decisions over the years, from his (to her mind) botched handling of the Boraalans to his forced reuniting of the Mariposa colony. That last one was a mess the da Vinci had had to clean up late last year. Still, he was the captain of the flagship, and Carol knew just how much was at stake if they didn’t bring him back at least relatively unscathed.

When Sarjenka ducked into the darkened tent, she saw Picard lying on his back on a cot, with Lieutenant Commander Data—at least, from the pictures she’d seen of the android, it looked like him—standing beside the bed, holding a medscanner over his captain. Data looked intent on the scanner’s display, a perplexed look on his features. The light from the tricorder was the only light in the tent. Captain Picard must be in the middle of a migraine attack.

“Commander Data?” she asked, lowering her voice just enough to still be heard through the mask, “How may we be of assistance?”

Dantas followed Sarjenka in and, apparently noting the darkness and the tone of Sarjenka’s voice, she gently placed her own medkit on the grass at their feet and softly said, “Commander, we’ve been sent to assist with the injured.”

Data turned away from the scanner just long enough to see Sarjenka. In the faint light, she noticed a surprised widening of his eyes. Almost as quickly as it appeared, it was gone, as though he’d had a brief emotional response to seeing her, but shut it down as quickly as possible. She’d heard a rumor among the engineering staff on the da Vinci that Data had managed to not only get a chip that allowed him to experience emotions, but had also learned how to turn it off.

If all sentient life forms could be so lucky.

“Sarjenka?” Data asked.

She took a step back. “Yes,” she said, her voice wary. “Do we know each other?”

Something happened to the android at that point. If he’d been flesh and blood, Sarjenka might have thought him conflicted about her presence. His chin lifted slightly, almost as though he wanted to say something, but thought better of it.

That was all it took for her to realize that the answer to her question was “yes.” She began foraging through her memories, trying to come up with a moment in the last eight years that they’d met. The attempt yielded no results.

Must have been the chapters on him in artificial neural anatomy class.

Sarjenka shoved the rest of the questions into the back of her brain. One, however, refused to be ignored.

Sarj, there are eight hundred ways you could know who he is, but how would he know your name?

Sarjenka closed her eyes, willing herself to concentrate on the task at hand. There would be a time for answers later. Patients first, always. Pulling her own scanner out of the medkit, she opened her eyes—trying to ignore the prickling feeling over every square centimeter of her skin at the android’s presence—and ran the device over Picard’s body, concentrating on his head. Much to her own admiration, Dantas managed to quietly set up the mini-laboratory in an empty part of the tent’s curvature. “How is Captain Picard doing?” Sarjenka asked, holding the scanner out beside Data’s to compare the information. Even after a few months around the engineers, she knew better than to try to import the information from his tricorder. Traiaka only knew what it would bring with it to damage her own unit.

“His situation is deteriorating,” Data replied, sotto voce. “The headaches are increasing in intensity.”

“And the only thing he’s been given for the headaches is the tea?”

“Yes.”

Sarjenka checked over everything she could think of. Picard’s serotonin and niacin levels were both within a normal range, no sign of vasoconstriction or a problem in the trigeminal nerve axons. His pupils were only slightly dilated, suggesting that even the atropine levels were hovering near normal. Well, it doesn’t totally eliminate my theory about the resemblance to belladonna. It doesn’t give me more to go on, though.

Still, she reached into her medkit for some rizatriptan and gave him a quick injection. It was an older treatment, but one of the few in her arsenal that she knew shouldn’t interact with the chemicals in the yenara-root. “That should at least dull the headache in a few minutes. Commander,” she said, gesturing to Dantas to join them, “may we step outside, please? I need to ask a few questions, and I don’t wish to disturb the captain any more than we already have.”

“Of course.”

Granted, Picard hadn’t moved since she’d walked into the tent, not even when she’d opened his eyes to check the pupils, but it was still a good medical precaution. Rest for the patient is never a bad idea.

When Sarjenka, Dantas, and Data were far enough away from Picard’s tent that she felt comfortable with them speaking in their normal voices, Sarjenka removed her mask and said, “Commander, I need you to be absolutely certain whether Captain Picard has been given any medications for these headaches beyond the yenara-root tea and what I just gave him.”

There was a familiar sincerity in both his voice and golden eyes as he said, “I am certain.” She wasn’t sure quite why, but she believed him.

In the corner of her eye, Sarjenka saw Makk and Commander Gomez finish linking a pattern enhancer to one of the phase discriminators, switching on the field.

Data showed no reaction.

She checked her tricorder against herself, and—save for the readings that differed due to her species—the rest were identical to Picard’s. Taking a deep breath first, she said, “All right. What I gave him should be sufficient to get him up and around from the migraine in about an hour, unless we have interaction issues. Although, from what I’ve been able to determine, those two medications should play well together. Has he ever had a problem in lower-gravity situations that you’re aware of?”

“Captain Picard has never had an adverse reaction to low- or zero-gravity situations.”

That backed up some of the things she’d read in Picard’s official medical file, so at least she knew Data was going to be reliable on that front. Have to remember to let Commander Gomez know that. Not now. Can’t let Data know we were questioning his own ability to function. “Okay, so it’s not the gravity difference.”

Data gave Sarjenka a slightly off look. She couldn’t quite figure out what it was, but after he mysteriously knew her name, she knew there was something strange going on. Filing it away in the “deal with this later” portion of her brain, she tried to ignore the varying expressions that crossed the android’s golden features.

“The natives offered us the tea to treat the headaches,” Data said. “I scanned the tea, as well as the yenara root itself before allowing anyone to consume it. There are no substances that would be harmful to humans. It has proven to be quite an effective treatment.”

“Yes,” Sarjenka said, “that was in your report to Starfleet Command, and thank you for that. It may not appear to be harmful to humans, but there are enough similarities to an old human folk remedy that it does concern me. There’s a chemical in the yenara root that only comes out when it’s made into the tea, but it may act like atropine in the body. Has he mentioned any difficulty swallowing, stopped perspiring, or exhibited any unusual anxiety levels?”

Data shook his head. “None that I am aware of.”

“I’ll track down some of that root,” Dantas said, finally lifting her own mask. Shrugging, she added, “Maybe there’s a compound that he’s allergic to in it.”

“Captain Picard has no known allergies,” Data replied.

“That’s what his medical file said as well. However, with all due respect, Commander,” Sarjenka said, “the critical word there is ‘known.’ The human body chemistry changes periodically. He might not have been allergic to this years ago, and suddenly now he is. Although what he’s presenting are not the typical signs of an allergic reaction.”

“I’ve seen stranger,” Dantas said. “Friend of mine in the Academy? Anytime she drank real red wine and not the synthetic stuff, she woke up the next morning with a puffy rash over half her face.”

“Rashes are typical allergic reactions,” Sarjenka said, more to Data than Dantas, and more apologetic for her assistant’s ability to distract from their purpose than correcting of the woman. “Your security chief said that the captain had also been wounded by projectile weapons fire?”

“I have treated Captain Picard’s wound,” Data replied, “but the others would not allow me to attend to them.”

Sarjenka and Dantas exchanged a puzzled look. “Why not?”

“They were adamant about being treated by an android. They refused.”

Dantas hefted her pack onto her right shoulder and gave them a beleaguered sigh. “Archaeologists. You can take them through history, but just getting through one day of their lives in this day and age? Scares the hell out some of them sometimes. You take care of the captain, boss. Leave the technophobes to me.”

Replacing her mask, Sarjenka followed Commander Data back into the tent and straight over to Captain Picard’s cot, smiling at Dantas’s calling her “boss.” Get used to it, Sarj. You’re CMO now. That didn’t change the fact that it was still strange to hear it.

Pulling her medical tricorder out, she took more readings. Holding it beside Data’s once again, she realized the readings were identical to the ones she’d taken before, as well as every other reading Data had taken. She tried not to curse, but it slipped out anyway. Walking back outside, she threw her mask against the nearest tree, tapped her combadge and said, “Sarjenka to Falcão. We’re going the old-fashioned route. Looks like the equipment is already affected. The phase discriminators aren’t working. Don’t trust your tricorders.”

“Good thing we brought the really scary needles then,” Falcão replied. Sarjenka could almost hear the smile on the medtech’s face. One day, she’d understand Dantas’s dark sense of humor, but she doubted it would be anytime soon. “Between all of the catalysts and reactants you packed, we should have enough to hand-test everyone’s brain and bodily functions without the tricorders. Provided you remember that class at the Academy.”

“I think I remember how to take spinal fluid samples, Dantas,” Sarjenka responded. “That’s the really long needle in the eyeball, right?”

The laughter on the other end of the combadge suggested that her attempt at sarcasm had been successful.

“Get back to work. Sarjenka out.”

“I am sorry,” Data began, “but I fail to see the purpose in placing a needle in your patient’s eye to test spinal fluid.”

Sarjenka’s cheeks turned a darker red. “It’s a joke, Commander. I’m sorry. The crew of the da Vinci, they tend to use sarcasm to help them cope when they’re stuck in situations that may not be optimal. I don’t understand the psychology of it yet, but I’m attempting to fit in, that’s all.”

Data’s expression turned from one of concern to one of almost paternal pride. “Ah, excellent work.”

Sarjenka tapped her combadge again, not wanting to admit how much Data was beginning to give her a case of the creeps. “Sarjenka to da Vinci.”

There was static in the connection this time, but she heard Captain Gold’s voice over it. “Gold here. What’s going on down there, Sarj?”

“Captain, we may have a medical outbreak down here. I’d like to have a quarantine put on the planet until we can figure out what’s causing this and find a way to stop it. I can’t guarantee we’re not dealing with an airborne pathogen here. If Starfleet could spare a transport vessel for people once we’ve cleared them for departure, it would be good.”

More static, then, “Understood. I’ll…cont—…Starfleet Command… da Vinci out.”

Sarjenka hoped that meant the captain would take care of things, help keep this situation from getting to the pandemic that a part of her expected. Oh, admit it, Sarj. You just want to have your first stint as CMO make Federation history for reasons other than your species.

That was when a retching noise sounded from the tent behind them. Sarjenka ran back and pulled the flap aside to see Picard trying to sit, but leaning more over the edge of the bed, vomiting. When he finally stopped, he seemed to realize there was light coming into the tent, and turned his gaze toward where Data and Sarjenka stood.

Data immediately moved to clean up the mess, while Sarjenka yanked the tent flap shut to eliminate the extra light, pulled out her scanner, and tried once more to get readings. Not even his blood pressure had changed.

The tricorders really have dummied up. You’re stuck…oh, how did Ekaran put it? Oh, yeah, healing without a net. Think, Sarj, think. Nausea and vomiting usually go hand-in-hand with a severe migraine. It’s not that unusual. Best get all of the information you can while he’s conscious.

“Captain Picard,” she said, “My name is—”

“—Sarjenka?” he finished, his surprise coming in a raspy voice thanks to the abuse his throat had taken. “I’m so sorry.”

And with that, he fell back against the bed, losing the battle with unconsciousness once more.

Corsi, with Vinx and Konya in tow, walked toward Christine Vale’s tent with a mixture of trepidation and—she’d never admit it, not even under duress—hope. It had been too long since she’d seen Vale. Too much had happened, and she was actually surprised to realize that she was looking forward to catching up.

“So, boss,” Vinx said from somewhere behind her. “Ya think some gang of grave robbers got in here and stole some of their loot?”

Corsi wanted to reply, but Konya beat her to it with an exasperated, “Thank you, Captain Obvious. I’m sure the boss has several working theories.”

Actually, she didn’t, but the Betazoid’s confidence in her was nice to hear. She also had to admit that for Vinx, “Captain Obvious” wasn’t a bad nickname. His ability to state the obvious was almost Vulcan at times. “That’s what we need to speak with Lieutenant Vale about, gentlemen,” she said. “We need to see what information she’s managed to get so far.”

Vinx grinned. “We get to pump the dolly, huh?” With a cat-who-ate-the-canary grin, he added, “I love this job sometimes.”

Groaning, Corsi wished that she had brought Hawkins along instead. One of these days, I need to find out why Iotians were ever allowed into Starfleet.

Inana Skanda lay back in the cot she shared with Gabe, her head pounding to a drumbeat all its own. The cot wasn’t much, just enough room for the two of them, but that was all she wanted. She could hear the conversations going on outside, and almost wished she had the strength to go and welcome them herself. But all of her strength was going toward fighting the headache. After the nearly-fatal allergic reaction she’d had to the yenara-root tea, the last thing she wanted to do was try another Icarian folk remedy. Grabbing Gabe’s pillow, she draped it over her forehead and eyes, willing the thrice-damned headache to seep out of her head and into the pillow.

There was always a possibility that it could work. Stranger things had happened since they’d arrived. Nana trying to give me cookies when she’s been dead for over a decade definitely makes the list.

Deciding she couldn’t take the pounding in her skull any longer, she reached to the set of boxes they used as a makeshift nightstand and grabbed the aspirin. It wasn’t much, and it hadn’t worked yet, but it was a remedy that had a track record, and that was all she needed.

She tried to clear her mind, to focus as her meditation instructor had taught her so many years ago. Focus. Focus attention on your head. Relax.

Slowly, she began consciously relaxing the muscles in her body, starting at the top of her head and ending at the tips of her toes. Focused relaxation, her instructor had said, often allowed the brain to access areas that consciousness wouldn’t. She felt herself hanging in that limbo state between wakefulness and sleep for a brief moment. Until finally, she heard a voice.

“Inana, sweetie?”

“Gemma?”

When she opened her eyes, the tent was gone, replaced by the soft pastel greens of her grandmother’s bedroom. What got her attention more than anything else were the smells: tea roses mixed with the aroma of baking cinnamon rolls—Gemma’s specialty—in the air.

She flipped the fluffy down comforter back, and realized that she was in her favorite lavender flannel pajamas. But she hadn’t worn those since childhood. “Gemma?” she asked. Her voice suddenly sounded very young to her ears, too young.

Her heart raced in her chest as she pushed herself out of the bed and ran toward the stairs that led down to the kitchen. “Gemma!”

She got down the stairs and nearly stepped on a hot cinnamon roll. A trail of eight more led to her grandmother; lying face down on the kitchen floor. Gemma’s left hand was underneath her, and her right arm was out to the side from where she’d fallen. The baking sheet that had held the rolls was on the floor about a half-meter from her right hand. She couldn’t tell if her grandmother was breathing.

Inana ran to the communicator in the dining room. “Emergency! Emergency! Call the rescue unit!”

The screen flashed the Federation logo, and then a dark-skinned man in the black-and-gold of a Starfleet security officer. “Federation Security and Emergency.”

“My grandmother’s having a heart attack! Help!”

“We’ll be right there, young lady,” the man said. His voice was so calm, it almost got her to relax, but she knew it was too late. Even then, she’d known.

It was only a few seconds, but it felt like years, before she heard the site-to-site transporter bring the emergency medical techs to the house. Tears rolled down her face as she turned around, watching them work as hard as they could, but it was to no avail.

“I’m sorry,” one of the techs said. It was an older woman, with a streak of gray hair that stood out from her black ponytail. “There’s nothing more we can do.”

Inana balled her hands into fists, burrowing them against her eyes. She wished she could push the image of her grandmother’s corpse from her mind. She wished she had woken up just a few minutes earlier.

When Inana opened her eyes, she was standing at the door of her tent. The smell of cinnamon was gone. She leaned against one of the tent’s supports with as much weight as she thought it would bear, feeling the tears streaming down her face. When she’d cried herself out, she ducked outside, heading toward the office. If she couldn’t sleep, maybe at least she could get some work in.

When Carol finally found Gabriel, he was in what Inana had called his “office”—more like a tent filed to the brim with every tool, map, guideline, reference, or even an old scrap of paper that might have had half a clue to something on it. Gabriel himself, though, was hunched over a table covered in old journals, padds, and a few data crystals that looked like they dated back to the early days of the Federation. She feigned knocking on the tent flap, but when that failed to get his attention, she simply said, “Gabe?”

When his eyes lifted to hers, there was a distance there that Carol couldn’t recall seeing, well, ever. “Carol? Come here. You’ve got to see this.”

“Inana’s worried about you,” she said, not moving from the doorway. “And, quite frankly, so am I. Just a few hours ago you were fine and sociable. She said you’ve been back in here ever since we started treating the wounded. Are you okay?”

A lopsided smile appeared on his features. “I’m fine,” he said, backing it with a shrug. “She can worry about nothing sometimes, I swear.”

All it took was a glimpse of the darkening circles under his eyes to tell her that was utter garbage. “Why are you ignoring your wife, Gabe?”

His expression turned bewildered. “Ignoring her?”

“Yes,” Carol said. “Inana sent me a message. I’ve never seen her so worried, Gabe. She was afraid you’d lost yourself to this dig. She said you kept going on about some artifact.”

“Yes,” he said, brightening, “the Krialta. Carol, it’s like nothing we’ve ever gone after before.” He began rifling through the papers on his makeshift desk, until he pulled out one with a flourish that was roughly the length of a photon torpedo. “Here. Look at this. It’s from an obelisk on a Gretharan battlefield memorial. Inana did the rubbing herself.”

“She did a rubbing?” Carol asked, genuinely surprised. “What for? Doesn’t Cambridge have the money for holocameras?”

Gabe gave her a half-smile. “Inana occasionally likes to go the old-fashioned route. She likes to have the paper to work with instead of a holo-image.” He turned his eyes back to the scattered papers, books, and chaos strewn on the table. “I guess it rubbed off on me.”

Carol groaned at the bad joke as she studied the dark chalk marks on the page. “The blocked style of the glyphs definitely suggests High Gretharan. Have you been able to translate it, yet?”

Gabriel shook his head. “Bits and pieces. What little we can get makes no sense. Why?”

“Abramowitz to Faulwell,” she said, tapping her combadge. “If you’ve got a minute, can you come by the office tent and give us a hand? We could use that brilliant head of yours.”

Static edged Bart’s reply. “Flattery will get you everywhere. It’s almost a shame you aren’t my type.”

“Just almost?” Carol asked raising an eyebrow.

“I’ll be there in a couple of minutes. Faulwell out.”

When Faulwell was finally able to give the rubbing a look, he immediately said, “Of course you can’t. It’s in High Gretharan characters, but it looks like there might be an encryption at work here.”

Carol patted Bart on the shoulder. “And we’ve got just the man to decrypt it.”

“I don’t know,” Faulwell said, cautiously raising one eyebrow. “Let me get all of the letters, and I’ll have some of my algorithms take a whack at them.”

“Uh, you might not want to put your computer against anything,” Gabriel said. “Our computers have been a bit tetchy lately. Yours—”

“Then I’ll do it myself if I have to,” Bart said. Pointing a finger toward his right temple he added, “It’s been a rough last couple of weeks, but I think the old brain is still up to it.”

Sarjenka stared at the unconscious Jean-Luc Picard with disbelief.

“Doctor?” Data asked. “Are you feeling all right?”

“Yes,” she replied, although she wasn’t quite as sure as she sounded. Her heartbeat was hammering in her ears, and every boom was accompanied by a question in her mind. Too many things felt off. Sure, after saving her world, Picard could have had the computer pull up any information if any Dreman ever entered Starfleet. That was always a possibility. But Data?

What bothered her most was how familiar being around the android felt. She took a step back, trying to distance herself from Picard’s bed. Her stomach was churning. She knew that Captain Gold and Captain Picard had been at the Academy together. Perhaps the captain had given Jean-Luc Picard an update on his crew since she’d joined? But that didn’t explain Data’s knowledge.

“Doctor?” Data asked once more.

Sarjenka couldn’t stop staring. Something felt wrong about the situation. She couldn’t put a finger on the problem, but her entire subconscious was screaming at her to get away.

And her entire conscious was yelling back that she had to know.

“What’s going on here?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” Data replied.

Sarjenka walked out of the tent, and into the warmth of the forest that surrounded the dig. Data followed, but she noted that he was allowing her to remain a step or two in front of him the entire time.

“Sarjenka?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

She turned on him, not quite sure whether to be angry, or frightened. “How do you know me?” she asked, fighting to keep her voice level. “How does Captain Picard know me? I’m beginning to feel like the butt of the biggest practical joke in history.”

Data opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again.

“What?” Sarjenka asked. “Why can’t you tell me? Does it have something to do with when Captain Picard saved my planet?”

Data’s eyebrows quirked.

“So it does,” she said. “What aren’t you telling me?”

The android’s expression turned deathly serious. “I am not at liberty to share that information.”

“Why not? I’ve read the reports, Commander. I know what the Enterprise did. You responded to a distress signal from my planet.”

Data simply stared stalwartly ahead, which only annoyed Sarjenka more.

“Commander,” she began, “my people have no record of a distress call being sent. None. Yet Starfleet’s official report says there was one. What’s the truth?”

“I am not at liberty to share that information,” he said.

“You know, don’t you?”

Data remained silent.

“You can’t even give me ‘yes’ or ‘no’?”

“I cannot.”

Sarjenka abruptly turned away from the android, wanting to be anywhere else at that moment. But before she could get two steps away, an image flashed in her mind: a man—a human—who had called her “that,” and who had made her quite afraid. In all her time at Starfleet Academy, she’d never seen this man, but he was as clear in her memory as if she’d seen him yesterday. He’d had short, curly hair, wore a uniform that, now that she thought about it, looked like that of a Starfleet operations officer, spoken with an accent she still didn’t recognize, and looked nothing like anyone she’d encountered in her life.

But why could she remember him so clearly?

She stumbled over a tree root as she walked, falling to the grass. Thanks to the planet’s lowered gravity, she didn’t even scrape her knee, but the memory was still rattling her much harder than the fall.

Until a hand touched hers, helping her to stand. A cool, comforting, familiar hand. “Are you injured?”

She looked down to the ground beneath her, only to find a padded gray floor covering. When she looked up, walls surrounded her, walls with light panels at the bottom, gray areas, and a panel that shone like black dilithium.

It all reminded her of being on a Starfleet vessel, but it was like no other vessel she could recall.

She looked up at Data, only to find that he seemed so much taller than he had just moments before.

Sarjenka’s heart began to hammer in her chest. She’d never had hallucinations before, only read about them in her textbooks, but this, this felt like the perfect example of all that she had been taught hallucinations could be. “Don’t take me to sickbay,” she said, her voice sounding so much younger. “Please, no.”

Data’s eyes widened. “I will not, Sarjenka. You are not injured.”

She forced her eyes closed, softly telling herself that she was just seeing things, that she was really in a warm forest, and the tent was just a few feet away, and Data wasn’t really part of her past, and she really wasn’t losing her mind.

Yanking her arm away from the android, she went back to Picard’s tent, hoping that some form of normalcy might help her forget.

Christine Vale stared at the computer screen, willing it to come back on.

“Computer, report cause of viewscreen failure,” she said, for the hundredth or so time—she’d long since stopped counting.

“Unable to comply,” was all she received in response, in that same irritating, superior, know-it-all tone that was grating on every one of her remaining nerves.

“Still functioning within normal parameters, computer?” she asked, thankful the computer couldn’t pick up on sarcasm. Although, truth be told, she wouldn’t have put it past Geordi La Forge to try to program it in there anyway.

“All systems are functioning within normal parameters.”

“Then why has the viewscreen failed?” she asked through clenched teeth. It was beginning to feel like the Peace Officer stations on Izar all over again.

“No viewscreen failure found.”

“Can you even see the damned viewscreen in the system?”

A blip-blop sounded as it apparently pinged the screen for a signal. “One viewscreen found. All readings are within normal parameters.”

Vale’s chin fell to her chest. She closed her eyes, counted to ten, and then said, “I’m not an idiot, computer. Everything’s hooked up the way Geordi told me to hook it up. You just found the viewscreen yourself. It’s getting a data feed from the portable central core. I’ve checked everything twice. It worked just fine before we left the Enterprise. Now, computer, if you don’t want me to take a phaser to your isolinear chips one…by…one, you’ll tell me why the viewscreen has failed.”

“No viewscreen failure found.”

With a groan of frustration, Christine reached forward and unhooked the viewscreen from the central processor. Tapping her combadge, she said, “Vale to Data.”

No response came.

What was it with the systems around here?

“Vale to Data, come in, please.”

Still, there was no response.

Every computer on this planet hates me, even Data.

She looked down to check her uniform, just to make sure she hadn’t hallucinated the whole time at Starfleet Academy. No, the uniform of an Izaran peace officer really had been replaced with that of a Starfleet security chief. If she’d hallucinated Starfleet Academy, she was still living in that fantasy world.

“Okay, viewscreen’s down. I can’t contact Data.” Tapping her combadge one more time, she said, “Vale to Picard.” Maybe, just maybe, his combadge was still working.

When even the captain didn’t respond, an alarm went off in the part of Christine’s mind that had become quite good at sensing trouble.

“It’s okay, Christine,” a voice said from behind where she sat.

That voice was entirely too familiar for her liking. She turned to look toward the dark burgundy of the tent’s flap door, and a strange glow was coming through. There was something familiar to it, almost like the red alert lights on the Enterprise. Vale got out of her chair and walked to the door, pulling it aside—

—to uncover the bridge of the U.S.S. O’Keefe, Captain Tamppari still in the center seat. “It’s okay, Christine,” the captain said, her voice like a calm breeze in the middle of a hurricane. The entire ship was on red alert, and Vale fought to keep the memory of why in that corner of her mind where things that were better forgotten resided.

“The chief needs you on deck nine.”

A knot of dread formed in her stomach. You’re hallucinating. Turn around, walk back into the tent.

But when she turned around, all she saw were the turbolift doors behind her.

Walk through the doors, Christine. Something’s very wrong.

“Lieutenant Vale,” Tamppari said, her voice taking on a more commanding tone. “Deck nine. Commander Ma needs you down there. She has new orders for you.”

Vale’s stomach threatened to divulge its contents at the memory of exactly what those new orders had been, overwhelming what she knew she should have been feeling: pride at her recent promotion to lieutenant junior grade.

A chirrup of the comm sounded, followed by “Utopia Planitia Control to O’Keefe, do you read?”

Vale had hated her stint on the Mars Defense Perimeter with every fiber of her being for one reason, and one reason alone. She’d tried so hard to force it into the “forget this” box of her memory that she’d almost thought she’d succeeded.

“This is the O’Keefe,” Captain Tamppari responded, her voice returning to that peaceful calm that had somehow always reassured her crew. “We’ve received the new orders from Starfleet Command and are proceeding with the tests accordingly.”

“Understood. Remain at alert status and report in when you’ve finished testing. Utopia Planitia out.”

Vale stared at the turbolift doors, praying for them to open back onto Icaria Prime.

“Ma to Vale, do you read?”

Every muscle in Vale’s back began to tighten. She took a deep breath, concentrating on relaxation.

“Ma to Vale, do you copy?”

With another deep breath, she realized that the damned turbolift doors just weren’t going to allow her out of this. Tapping her combadge, she said, “Vale here. I’ll be right there, Commander.”

When Corsi reached Christine Vale’s tent, she found the younger woman standing in front of her tent door, staring back at the tent as though she were waiting on a turbolift to arrive.

“Christine?” Corsi said.

There was no response.

Corsi put a little more force behind her voice and said, “Lieutenant Vale, can you hear me?”

Again, there was no response.

Corsi looked back at Konya. “Can you sense anything from her?” She knew it was probably a futile gesture, as Konya just wasn’t that strong a telepath, but she didn’t have much else at that moment.

Rennan stared at the unmoving Vale, seeming to focus intently on her for a few moments before shaking his head. “Her body language doesn’t match the stimulus around her. She’s reacting to things that aren’t there.”

“Lights are on, but nobody’s home,” Vinx said, wandering over and waving a hand in front of Vale’s face.

Corsi tapped her combadge. “Corsi to Sarjenka.”

Silence answered her.

She tried again. Still, all she got in response was silence.

“Damn. The comms are out. Vinx, go back and get Sarjenka. If she’s busy, get Falcão. Something’s going on here.”

“You got it, boss,” the Iotian said, hefting his phaser rifle and setting off on a run through the greenery back in the direction they’d come.

As soon as Makk was out of sight, Corsi turned to Rennan. “You’re sure?”

Konya nodded. “The only time I’ve ever gotten this kind of a sense was when I was in the room with someone having a lucid dream.”

“She’s sleepwalking?”

“It’s a possibility.” The rolling of thunder echoed in the distance. Konya looked up. “We should get inside, Commander. It sounds like it’s going to rain.”

Corsi nodded, turning to grab Vale’s shoulders to lead her back into her tent. But Christine was faster than she’d expected. Vale turned on her heel and walked right by Corsi. Domenica caught the glazed look in Vale’s eyes. She was out of it, all right. But Corsi had never seen, let alone heard of, someone sleepwalking with their eyes open.

“Konya,” she said, “get the evacuation going. Go to a five kilometer radius for the moment. If you see signs of the field expanding, take it to ten kilometers. I’ll keep an eye on our sleepwalker.”

Christine reached the doors to the security chief’s office, but it still took her a minute before she could press the door chime. When she finally hit the button, Ma said, “Come in.”

“Reporting as ordered, ma’am,” Vale said as the doors parted.

Christine entered to find the chief staring at the viewscreen on her desk, a look of distaste on her angled features. “Can you believe this?” she said. “They found a changeling infiltrating Starfleet Headquarters. God, if they’ve gotten that far into our infrastructure, they could be anywhere—or anyone. This is not good. Not at all.”

“Or any thing,” Vale offered. “They can—”

Before she could finish the thought, the door chime to Ma’s office rang again. “Ah, that should be Dr. Kyril. Come in.”

The O’Keefe’s CMO walked in, his white hair sticking straight up in about a hundred different directions, crows feet growing deeper in the corners of his eyes, and a medkit on each shoulder. “Ah, yes, Christine,” he began, his Slavic accent mangling her name only slightly. It was improvement. At least he’d finally realized her name wasn’t Krasmira, which he’d called her for the first three weeks of her stint on the ship. There was a look in his gray eyes, one that she had only ever seen with the manic nature of the man on his way through the multiple tangents of thought that often lead to a moment of pure brilliance. She remembered describing him to someone—possibly Dr. Crusher on the Enterprise—with these words: if there was a fine line between genius and insanity, the man was using it for jump rope. “Good. I need your help. I believe I have streamlined the method for detecting changelings.”

“There’s a method for detecting them now?” Christine asked, half-remembering something about Deep Space 9’s CMO—Julian Bashir, if her memory of the station’s record was correct—having concocted a blood test for them, but her mind wouldn’t give up more than that.

Still, Christine knew why she’d been summoned. Commander Ma had never been one to do the dirty work herself. She’d always been the “tactical command” type of security chief: never putting the wrong person in position, and always believing that she was the wrong person to take point on anything. Tactical drill scenarios were par for Ma’s course, although Vale had long since developed the theory that she only instituted them when she was really bored.

“Normally,” the security chief began, her soft voice taking a harder edge as she realized it was show time for her, “protocols would have me leading this testing, Christine. But I think, with that new hollow pip, you’re ready to take point on a tactical project.”

Vale’s stomach did another back-flip. “Take point, ma’am?”

“Yes. I want you to take charge of testing the entire crew of the O’Keefe for changeling infiltrators. Consider it your first taste of mission command.”

Sonya Gomez was up to her ears in replicator parts when she heard footsteps padding into the work tent. Clearing their throat first, a male voice asked, “Commander Gomez?”

She leaned backward from where the equipment rested on the floor and turned her attention toward the door, her eyes raising to find a tall, slender man in an olive-drab tunic and black pants standing in the doorway. His left arm was crooked over a spot in his shirt, and when he moved just a step toward her, she saw the hole and bloodstain of a projectile weapon injury on his lower left side. “Yes? Has Sarjenka treated you for that wound?”

The man nodded. “Her assistant did. I’ll be fine.”

He came down to sit beside her, and she began to notice an oddly familiar look in his coal-black eyes, almost as though—

“You don’t remember me, do you?” he asked. Running a hand through shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair, she realized that he was right. That café au lait complexion, the elongated nose, the intense dark eyes, they were familiar, but she couldn’t place them. The wound suggested he’d been recently injured, but the man looked nothing like the images she’d looked up of Heyerdahl, Davis, and Cunningham after they’d been reported injured. Something—

A white-hot spike of pain drove through her right eye, burrowing deep into her brain. Sonya closed her eyes and curled into a fetal position on the tent floor, her right hand pressing her forehead just over that eye as though she could push the pain away. But that only made it worse, shooting in tiny fingers out to every corner of her brain. She fought the urge to claw into her skull and drag out whatever it was by hand.

Sonya wasn’t sure how long she spent lying on the floor of the tent, but the smell of saltwater managed to surprise her enough to open her eyes.

There she saw the same man, with the same salt-and-pepper hair, and the same olive-drab tunic and black pants, but no projectile hole or bloodstain on his clothes anywhere. The sun was bright overhead, too bright. It was almost as though—

Home? Sun Bay?

He was fussing over her with towels, and she could hear her mother yelling in the distance. “¡Mija! ¡Rescate a mija! Sonya, it’s Mama!”

In angry, mocking tones, she heard her sister Belinda’s voice, just barely loud enough to make it over the din of the splashing waves and their mother’s cries, “¿Por qué no eres més como Sonya?”

The spike of pain brought her back to Icaria Prime, and the floor of the tent.

Sonya pried her eyes open, only to discover that she was, in fact, alone. A faint mist came through the tent’s porous walls. Her right hand returning to place gentle pressure over her right eye, she slowly pulled herself to her feet and stumbled to the door. No sooner did she get there than a burst of rain blew through, hitting her square in the face.

This time, the briny smell of the ocean’s spray wasn’t there. It was the verdant aroma of rain in the forest outside.

She opened her mouth to call for someone, but quickly the sound of feet splashing through a puddle made its way to her ears. “Commander Gomez?”

It was another member of the dig, a wet bandage encasing his right thigh. His shoulder-length dark hair was soaked from the rain. It was definitely one of the academics. Only they would have been able to get away with that haircut. “Commander Gomez,” he said. “Are you all right?”

One corner of Sonya’s lip turned in what she thought was an upward direction. It was more a noncommittal look than she wanted, but all she could say was, “I think so.”

Great, now I’m having the hallucinations, too?

Swallowing hard, she pulled herself into a seated position. The boat, her sister, her mother’s screaming, it had all seemed so real. Yet, there was something wrong with it somehow. Sonya shook her head hard, trying to clear the image of her sister’s mocking eyes from her mind. Belinda hadn’t mocked her, not once. It had been Belinda who’d pulled her out of the water.

But, where had the man with the salt-and-pepper hair come from? Had he been on the boat that day? Why couldn’t she remember him?

“Are you sure you’re okay?” the man asked again, concern very evident in his voice as he reached a hand out to her elbow and helped her to her feet. “You were screaming.”

“I was?” She certainly didn’t remember that. “I…I don’t know.”

“You saw something from your past, didn’t you?”

Sonya tried—and failed rather spectacularly—to hide her surprise. “How did you know?”

The edges of the man’s lips quirked up. “We haven’t met. I’m Paul Cunningham. Seen a few things from my past the last few days, myself. Did everything you saw seem right to you?”

Sonya took a step back. “How do you mean?”

That was when she saw the haunted look in Paul’s blue eyes. “Things you thought you knew, suddenly they’re different from how you remember them? And not always in a good way?”

She thought it over for a moment. Something certainly had been different all right. Sonya felt a tickle in the back of her mind, as though something was trying to break through. It didn’t feel like a telepathic connection—at least none that she’d ever experienced—but she remembered some of the counseling sessions she’d had with Deanna Troi shortly after being stationed to the Enterprise. The empath’s abilities had always felt like a feather rubbing across her thoughts, enough to sense, but not enough to do anything more.

This? This felt like more. Sonya was beginning to wonder if there wasn’t a Betazoid a lot stronger than Konya hiding out among Gabriel Collins’s team.

A strong telepath would certainly explain the memory hallucinations. Sonya winced as her brain gave her a quick spike of pain. Though why invoke traumatic memories in the dig team and then lump equipment failures on top of that. Isn’t one form of torture enough?

Torture. From what she knew of the Letheans, that wasn’t outside of the realms of possibility. And telepathic attacks certainly were their modus operandi. Tapping her combadge, she said, “Gomez to Corsi.”

Static filled the line.

“Gomez to Corsi, do you read?”

Great. Of all the times for the comms to go. That line of thought sprouted an idea. “Paul, could you please take me to see some of the things you’ve found on the dig? I have a feeling the Letheans might have left a surprise behind.” But before they left the tent, Sonya knew they needed one thing. “Did you manage to get any of the projectile weapons from the attackers?”

He nodded, walking toward a small trunk. “We managed to kill three of them before the others ran. I think Christine put the guns in here.”

Sonya sighed. “Please don’t tell me it’s locked.”

Cunningham leaned forward and rapped on one side of the trunk with his left elbow. With a clunk, the metal flap that had housed the built-in lock flipped open. “Okay, I won’t tell you.”

Making sure they had guns and as much ammunition as was available, Gomez headed out, with Cunningham right on her heels.

Sarjenka returned to Picard’s side to find him once again unconscious, but his pupils remained responsive. He didn’t stir at her light in his eyes. The aroma of the small burner and nutrient broth warming didn’t even faze him. To her, though, it almost smelled good.

“Sarjenka,” Data’s voice sounded from behind her.

The familiarity of his tone turned her stomach into knots. She reached into the pocket of her uniform and grabbed the singer stone, allowing it to perform its usual function of calming her nerves. Closing her eyes, she briefly gave herself a moment to be back at home, curled up with her Kakerna Krana doll on her big, cushioned bed. She was safe there; nobody could harm her at home. Taking slow, deep breaths, she willed herself to calm. She could almost feel Jenkara, her pet reeka, curling up with her in the bed as it had done most of her childhood, its long, thinly-scaled tail curling around it and over her as they both slept.

Home. After her years in the Academy and at Starfleet Medical, everything she had ever wanted, how could the memory of home be so compelling?

If the reports were accurate, at least five people on the dig had been dealing with memories so compelling, yet so disconcerting, that it had affected their brain function.

That was when an idea struck. Forcing herself back to the reality at hand, she said, “Data, could you please hand me the medkit?”

The android silently obliged.

“Thank you,” she said. Pulling out a hypospray, she loaded an empty sample collector and drew a vial of Picard’s blood.

She walked over to where Dantas had set up their small lab, mentally going over the list of reagents she’d brought along. Yes, embrivite. That should tell me if this is what I think it is.

Sarjenka started the test, grabbing a transparent aluminum slide and placing a few drops of Picard’s blood on it, along with two drops of embrivite. She grabbed a spreader slide and used it to disperse the mixture over the entire slide, then placed it in a small, vacuum sealed container to allow the reaction, whatever reaction it would be, to happen.

“If I may,” Data began, “what are you thinking?”

Sarjenka looked up at the android. “In Starfleet Medical, we studied some of the medicines and medical techniques used by various species; Vulcan birthing methods, Andorian blood transfusions, and even substances used by the Cardassians for memory control.”

Data’s eyes widened. “Do you believe the Cardassians are behind what is happening?”

“No,” she said. “Of course not. They barely have a homeworld anymore, let alone the resources for something like this. What reason would they have to be out here now? This does remind me of one of their methods though.”

“Desegranine,” rasped Picard, still flat on his back, but with an arm over his eyes. “Desegranine has the same—” Anything he might have said was interrupted by a coughing fit.

Sarjenka brought the captain a warm cup of broth. “Yes, sir,” she said. “Please, drink this. It will help replenish the nutrients in your body as well as soothe your throat. Desegranine is what the Cardassians use to reverse memory loss. Usually, it’s just the Obsidian Order using it on deep cover agents so they remember who they were, but if you’ve got it or anything like it in your blood, we need to know where it came from. I only know of one instance where it’s been used on a human, but the symptoms were similar.”

When she returned her attentions to the blood sample under her microscope, the embrivite had stained the blood an almost Vulcan shade of green. Sarjenka was unable to hide her surprise at the results. “It’s negative?”

“Negative?” Data asked.

“Yes. Captain Picard, sir,” she began, “I need to get you back to the da Vinci. The phase discriminators we brought down don’t appear to be negating the energy field that’s affecting our equipment. Are you able to stand?”

Picard leaned forward, only to have the teacup fall from his hand with a clatter.

“That would be a ‘no,’ then,” Sarjenka said. “Let me consult with Commander Corsi, see if we can’t get some people to take you back to the shuttle.”

“What about the others?” Data asked.

“If they want treatment for this,” she matter-of-factly said, “we can take them as well. If they insist upon remaining here? The only thing I can do appears to be give them palliatives. There’s an underlying cause here, but I can’t test for it with this field in place.”

The android walked over to where she stood, looking down at her with that same unsettling familiarity. “How may I render assistance?”

She stared up at him, and an image flashed in her mind. It was Data, with the same expression on his face, looking much larger as he looked down at her, trying to console her as she ducked behind him to get away from a dark-haired woman.

“Tell me how you know me,” Sarjenka finally said. “Ever since Dantas and I came into this tent, you’ve both been looking at me as though you know me. How did you know my name?”

A groan emanated from Captain Picard’s cot, catching Data’s attention. “Captain, is something wrong?”

Picard gestured for the android to come over, and Data obediently did just that, bending over so he could hear his captain’s words. While Sarjenka watched, Picard said something into Data’s ear. Data appeared to consider whatever it was carefully before walking back to her.

“We should return him to the da Vinci first,” Data said. “His condition is not optimal.”

“I know that,” she said. “And we’ll get you back to the ship as soon as possible, Captain.”

No sooner did the words leave her mouth than Makk Vinx walked into the tent. “Hey, Doc. The boss needs you. Her friend ain’t acting right. Thinks you might be able to help.”

Just as Vinx got those words out, Rennan Konya walked in behind him. “Ma’am,” Konya said, “Commander Corsi wanted us to get the evacuation in order.”

Sarjenka’s eyes darted between them. “All right. Make sure Lieutenant Vale is evacuated as well. I’ll examine her when we all get to the shuttles.”

Konya gave a curt not. “Is there anything we can do here?”

“Have you tried the phase discriminators? Can we transport back to the da Vinci?”

“Tried them, and negative, ma’am,” Konya said. “No luck.”

Sarjenka sighed. Time to start being a chief medical officer. “All right, then. Commander Data, could you please help me get Captain Picard to our shuttles? Makk, Rennan, anyone else who’s had memory hallucinations needs to be transported as well. I can’t treat them properly down here. Get Dantas to help you. We need to make sure they’re kept calm and relaxed the whole trip.”

When Konya and Vinx went to help Picard out of his cot, they were treated to another round of viewing the captain’s stomach contents.

Sarjenka took a deep breath while she thought. The continued vomiting wasn’t a good sign. He needed fluids, and not of the tea variety. There had to be a way to get him to the shuttle without invoking the nausea.

“Makk, Rennan, please work with Dantas to make sure the others are taken to the shuttles. Commander Data and I will tend to Captain Picard.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Rennan said, almost dragging Makk out before he could make the inevitable Iotian comment that she knew would get him into trouble. Sarjenka had contemplated hooking up a canister of anesthezine gas to the vent in his quarters just to make him a bit more tolerable to the female members of the crew.

That was when the idea struck. Sedation, it couldn’t be that simple, could it? Rustling through the medkit, she came up with a hypospray of melorazine. It wasn’t perfect, Traiaka knew, but it would work—for a while. It was also standard enough a medication that interactions shouldn’t be a concern. “Okay, Captain, I’m going to give you a sedative. Transporters aren’t working in this area of the planet. We have two shuttles a kilometer from here. We’re going to carry you there. This sedative shouldn’t interact with what I’ve already given you, but moving you shouldn’t be an issue, either.”

Picard nodded. “Do…you must.”

She put the hypospray to Picard’s neck, and then stood up, waiting on the medication to take effect.

When they reached the tent that housed the dig team’s finds to date, Sonya Gomez was soaked from head to toe. “Maybe we could leave this place with a nice weather control satellite before we go,” she mused aloud, wringing some of the rainwater out of her hair as she ducked inside. Sonya peeled off the wet uniform jacket, hanging it on the back of a chair as she walked past. Her shirt was still damp, but one light layer of wet fabric was far preferable to two in the warmth of the forest.

“Hey,” Cunningham said, a slight smile on his face, “I know we wouldn’t say no. This is the fifth down-pour this week. Makes working a dig a total pain in the ass.”

Gomez was surprised to find herself returning that look. “I can imagine. What makes you do this?”

“Do what?”

Sonya gestured to the artifacts that surrounded them. “This. Come out to some planet in the middle of nowhere and look for the past? Living in the past isn’t always the healthiest thing. Why not explore the future?”

Cunningham chuckled. “You never studied Santayana?”

Gomez searched her memory. Shaking her head, she said, “If I did, I don’t remember it.”

“‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’? Doesn’t Starfleet Academy teach philosophy classes anymore?”

Sonya wanted to cover her face in embarrassment as the memory surfaced. “Yes, they do. I guess I didn’t pay that much attention.”

“Too anxious to explore the future?” he chided.

“Maybe.” Turning toward a large table full of what looked like oddly shaped bits of pottery, she said, “What are these?”

Fortunately, he got the hint and allowed her to change the subject. “These? Just bits of pottery and statues from the lowest levels of the dig so far. They predate the Gretharan occupation of this territory by at least a century. At least, I think they do. Without the equipment, it’s difficult to be sure.”

One piece piqued Sonya’s interest. It was a small, carved sculpture, the color of jade, if jade came in a dark teal green. There was something intriguing about the shape. It looked almost humanoid, but the length of the neck suggested the lighter gravity of a planet like Icaria Prime. “What’s this?”

Paul looked at the sculpture for a moment. “Oh, that. Jean-Luc found it. He thought it was High Gretharan, but we’re not so sure. It was found in a layer of artifacts that date back to before the Gretharans were known to live here. If it’s Icarian, like I suspect, it’s possible it dates back to before humanity even had spaceflight. Gabe and I have gotten a request in for a grant to conduct a further dig just to follow up on it.”

“So these weren’t the Gretharans? Who were they?” Sonya asked. If they looked anything like the sculpture, they were certainly impressive: a swan-like neck, a skull that looked to be proportionally larger than a human’s, long, elegant arms and fingers. They looked like a fascinating race, fragile, yet still formidable if they thrived in this kind of weather. “Have you found any biological evidence they were here, or is it just this sculpture?”

Paul’s lips pursed. “Just that and a few shards of pottery so far. We don’t even have a name for them.”

“And if we cobbled together a weather control system?”

Cunningham’s cheeks reddened. “We might be able to find more.”

“Well,” she said, “we’d have to check with the Icarian government, of course.” Sonya looked around at the artifacts that were on every available surface. While nothing grabbed her attention quite as intently as the sculpture had, there was one piece that did intrigue her. A stone sphere roughly the size of her fist rested in the middle of one of the tables. It was covered in what looked like glyphs, but she couldn’t make heads or tails of what they were. She reached out and picked it up, but nearly doubled over when the full weight of the thing was in her hands. “What’s this?” she asked, surprised.

“Heavy, ain’t it?” Paul deadpanned. “Gabe found three of those in an obelisk near what he thinks is a temple. We checked the place out, and it doesn’t look like anything any of us have seen before. When Jean-Luc and Data got here, they took a look, too. What the hell, we’ve got a walking, talking computer, might as well see if it knows anything, right? The best any of us can figure is it’s some sort of ceremonial location. Gabe said the glyphs looked Gretharan, but they don’t correspond to any dialect we know of.”

Sonya hefted the piece back onto the table, amazed it could handle the weight. “The density readings on that must be amazing.”

“They’re not. Davis, our geologist, thinks it’s an iron-core meteorite with some burned quartz on the outside. Whoever carved those glyphs handled a lot of radiation, though.”

That got Sonya’s tricorder in her hand in a quick second.

“Don’t worry,” Paul said. “We got good scans on it before the equipment went belly up. The radiation levels fell off centuries ago. We’re safe.”

Even though she knew it would probably be useless, Sonya still stubbornly ran her tricorder over the stone, just to be safe. All of the readings were within a safe range. She ran several scans, covering everything from radiation output to electromagnetic influence to about fifteen other things she could think of, and everything was within the safety zone.

Which, alone, was enough to set off her mental alarms.

“Commander Gomez?” Cunningham began. “Are you all right?”

Sonya shook her head. “I don’t know. Something’s not right here. I mean, we’ve had iron-core meteorites like this on Earth for centuries, so they can’t be the cause of what’s going on with the people here.”

“What is going on?”

She couldn’t hide the concern in her expression as she turned to face him. “Something here is emitting a field similar to thoron radiation. It forced us to come down in a shuttle instead of beaming down. And the field is expanding unevenly, making it impossible to get an exact focal point. On top of that, even our scanners are becoming useless in this. Has one of your artifacts done anything—strange—since you discovered it?”

“Strange as in how?”

Sonya looked around, pursing her lips as she thought. Finally, she said, “I don’t know, acted as though it had suddenly been turned on? Best we could tell from orbit, this field isn’t naturally occurring. It has to be generated by something. And it has to be something here or nearby. The dig site is the closest thing we can determine to a focal point. Maybe something in this temple Gabriel thinks he found?”

Cunningham shrugged. “Nothing that I’ve seen. Trust me, if something started acting weird and we’d seen it, you’d be the first to know.”

“Can you take me there?” Sonya asked. “I’d like to take a look around for myself.”

“Of course. We’ll get Gabriel and your friends on the way.”

Sonya put a hand on Paul’s arm. “If there’s something coming from inside the temple, I’d prefer to put as few people at risk as possible right now. Especially with what little ammunition we have. Who knows more about the temple, you or Gabriel?”

“Gabe, definitely.”

“Then let’s get him and Domenica. No offense, but I’d much rather have my security chief watching our backs in case any more looters show up.”

Still imprisoned in her own hallucination, Christine rang the door chime to the room that housed Lenmar, the sole Aquan member of the O’Keefe’s crew. First contact with the Aquan home planet of Argo had been almost a century before, after a cycle of earthquakes had caused the habitable landmasses on the planet to collapse beneath the water’s surface.

Fortunately for the Aquans, they were also a species that had acquired a tremendous knowledge of genetic manipulation. Within two generations, they had managed something they called a “surgo-op,” which, when boiled down, was nothing more than adding a chromosome or two to allow them to develop gills for their new underwater life.

When another cycle of quakes had given them back some of the habitable landmasses, a group of Aquans chose to engineer their own genetic structure to allow them to live an amphibious lifestyle. Lenmar was one of those Aquans.

When Christine rang the door chime to his quarters, she was never sure whether she’d be greeted by a soaking wet, half-naked Lenmar who’d just been in his tank, or a fully dressed Lenmar in his specially designed uniform and boots. One was just as likely as the other.

Fortunately for her sense of decorum, she was greeted by the fully dressed Lenmar, who raised his brow—if she could call the crest of multicolored scales that ran over his eyes a brow—and asked, “Yes, Lieutenant?”

Christine pulled the medkit from her shoulder. “Lenmar, I’m sorry to disturb you, but we’ve been asked to check for changelings across the ship. Do you have a moment?”

She saw herself making all of the same moves, each one just upping the ante on her mistake. A memory in Christine’s mind screamed for her to stop, turn around, and let Dr. Kyril take this one. But Kyril couldn’t take Lenmar; he was still too busy dealing with the testing on the senior staff. All she could do was step inside the Aquan’s quarters as he gestured for her to have a seat in one of the few chairs that hadn’t been specially designed for his species. “Of course, Lieutenant,” Lenmar said. “We need to find the changelings and make sure they don’t get too close to the President or the Council. If I may ask, what’s involved in the test?”

“It’s a blood test,” she heard herself saying. “All I need to do is take a small sample of your blood.”

“Huh,” the Aquan replied. “Do you really think that I could be a changeling?”

Christine’s eyes shot wide open. “Oh, of course not, Lenmar,” she began, her voice a bit more rushed than she’d have liked. A part of her wanted to wince at her own naïveté. “It’s just a new security protocol. Every ship in the fleet is being asked to make sure their crews are who they’re supposed to be.”

“And you would doubt the identity of the second son of Domar?” he asked, his voice reaching an officiousness that Vale had only ever before associated with royalty. She knew Lenmar’s record. He might have been the grandson of High Tribune Domar himself, but she knew that his title meant nothing in Starfleet. They’d had the children of the royalty of other planets serving over the years. She’d even encountered a couple of upperclassmen back at the Academy who’d bonded over their perceived elite status.

“Lenmar,” she said, choosing her words as carefully as a gourmet chef might pick the right spice. “No one doubts your identity at all. We all know that you are Lenmar, second son of High Tribune Domar, heir to the land-kingdom of Humus, and one of the first dual-breathers in Aquan history.”

“Yet, you would test my word?”

“We all have to be tested, Lenmar,” she said. “Directive from Starfleet Command.” She tried her best don’t-shoot-the-messenger tone, but Vale knew the hairs on the back of her neck were prickling. “I’m only following the orders I was given.”

“And how many others who’ve gone on—what is it you call them, oh yes—witch hunts have said the same thing?”

Christine Vale simply stood there, realizing that what Lenmar had said was the absolute truth. This wasn’t security, not the way she knew it. Sure, she knew that it was always best to know that the people on your ship were all the people who were supposed to be there, but this? “Witch hunt” was exactly what she’d been set on. But you have to do it, Christine, she tried to tell herself. If you don’t, he’ll just get Kyril instead when he finally gets around to it. And Kyril won’t be strong enough.

“Please, Lenmar. All I’m asking is a simple blood sample. Nothing more. I won’t trouble you for a moment after that.”

The Aquan took a deep breath, and then headed toward the back portion of his quarters. “Let me get in the tank,” he said, sounding defeated, “It’ll soften up my skin so you can get your sample.” A small privacy door closed between the two rooms, and reopened on Lenmar’s command. “You may enter, Lieutenant.”

Vale took two steps forward, a part of her screaming to stop. But nothing worked. She reached into the medkit for the sharper of her hyposprays, loaded it with an empty sample vial, and walked toward Lenmar’s tank. Tank? Looks like a giant hot tub to me.

As she took a step closer, she noticed the steam begin to rise from the water’s surface. Yeah, hot tub. She knew that some Aquans preferred warmer waters, but she didn’t think they liked them quite that warm.

He allowed her to take a small blood sample from an area of scaled skin that had been underwater. When she looked at the vial, it was a dark red, precisely as it should have been.

Until it slowly turned gold.

Before she could register the change, Lenmar had her in the boiling-hot water. His hand was firmly pressed to her chest, holding her under. Christine tried twisting and turning in every way she could imagine, until finally she got an idea. Her backside was at an angle to the specially designed reclining area for the Aquan, leaving her legs pointing straight up.

Her vision blurred by the combination of lack of oxygen, buildup of carbon dioxide, and having to see through the water, it took her a moment to get the thought together. When she did, she reached her legs around Lenmar’s neck, using a scissor motion to pull him off-balance. It was just enough to get the fist off of her chest.

When she surfaced, it was the best breath of air she had ever inhaled.

Lenmar—or the changeling who had been posing as Lenmar—sat at the other end of the tub, staring at her with a gleam of conquest in his eyes. “You’re dead, human. All of you.”

Vale scrambled out of the hot tub, slapping her combadge as soon as she could get her footing, and praying it would work after the soaking. “Vale to bridge. Changeling on board. Seal all ventilation shafts and Jeffries tubes.”

She reached for her phaser, but it wasn’t at her belt clip. Christine caught sight of it across the room, sitting on top of the medkit where she’d stupidly placed it. Moving as quickly as she could, she grabbed it, flipped it to the highest setting, and turned on Lenmar.

But the changeling was nowhere to be found.

“Damn it!”

Christine was drenched, and she still felt as though the weight of five planets had been pressing on her chest. “Vale to bridge, he got away. The changeling was posing as Lenmar.”

With a fleeting wonder of when Lenmar had been replaced, Vale stumbled toward the door. Once back in the relatively safer sanctuary of the ship’s corridors, she made her way to the turbolift. Best get checked out, make sure he didn’t do anything more than wind me.

Oh, she knew he had cracked a couple of ribs with that attempt to kill her, but still, she stood before the turbolift doors, waiting…

Carol leaned back in her chair, stretching her arms back over her head and enjoying the sound of the rain falling on the tent’s roof. She’d been hunched over the High Gretharan research materials that Gabe’s team had been using for far too long, and could have sworn she heard a couple of vertebrae pop back into place. It probably should have hurt, but it really felt good. She almost wished Vance were there to give her a good backrub.

Bart, to his credit, simply sipped at what she thought was his third or fourth coffee of the day, and went back to studying the rubbing.

“I wonder where the coffee came from?” Carol asked. “If the food replicators aren’t working properly, how’d they get the beans?”

Almost on cue, Inana ducked inside the office tent. “I brought them along,” she said, her voice softer than usual. Carol couldn’t help but notice that it looked as though she’d been crying. “I had to trade one of the seedlings I had in stasis to Captain Idises after a poker game on the way out here, though. But the rest? They’re out in a little garden by our tent.”

“Are you okay?” Carol asked.

“Yeah, just couldn’t sleep.”

Carol arched a dark eyebrow. “You couldn’t have known the replicators would fail. Why grow your own beans? Why not just let the replicators make the coffee?”

“Because,” Inana said, a slight smile appearing on her lips, “oh, call me old-fashioned, but I hate the taste of replicated coffee. Since it takes so long for the plant to grow properly, I had some seedlings treated with growth accelerant before we left Earth, and you have no idea how fast they’re growing in this soil. We got the first batch of beans to roast just a couple of weeks after they were transplanted.”

She’d only dabbled in hydroponics, but nonetheless, Carol was suitably impressed. “Doesn’t the soil here affect the taste?”

Carol got a chuckle out of the verve with which her comrade drank the brew. “Nope,” Bart said in between gulps. “Not a bit. Carol didn’t say you were an agrobiologist.”

Before they could get any further, however, another woman walked into the tent, followed almost immediately by Commander Corsi. “Lieutenant Vale,” Carol began, giving the woman a visual once-over. The black-and-gold uniform was drenched from the rain and—from what she could tell—Vale had changed her hair color to a nice auburn since the last time they’d met. But there was something in her eyes, a look of dread tinged with fear that even sent a small shiver up Carol’s spine. “Can we help you?” she said.

Vale stood just inside the tent’s doorway, staring straight ahead.

“Christine?” Corsi asked.

Vale didn’t respond.

Inana took a step toward her—

—and that was when Vale flinched. Shaking her head as though clearing cobwebs, she asked, “Wha—What am I doing here?”

“Christine,” Inana began, “where did you think you were?”

Vale’s cheeks turned a deep crimson. It looked as though she’d been frightened to her core. Swallowing hard, she said, “I should check on Captain Picard.”

“Christine,” Inana tried again. Where had this persistence come from? “Are you seeing things that aren’t there? People, maybe?”

Vale quickly glanced her way, eyes haunted. “I should check on Captain Picard,” she said again, this time far more insistent. Turning on her heel, Vale ducked around Corsi, left the tent, and went back into the rain before anyone could ask another question.

Carol could hear Inana’s sigh all the way across the tent, even with the rain outside. “That’s six.”

“Six?” Bart asked.

“Six who’ve had hallucinations.”

“How bad are these hallucinations?” Corsi asked.

Inana visibly shuddered. “Bad. Everyone’s had a memory they would rather forget manifest in front of their eyes.”

Carol raised an eyebrow. “You never went to med school, how do you know she was hallucinating?”

“I know.” Inana gave a half-smile and shook her head in disbelief. “You still won’t give me any credit, will you, Carol? How could someone who’s so conscious of a culture and its stereotypes be so ignorant of when they’re applying them themselves?”

Abramowitz stopped cold. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Are you?”

Carol swallowed hard. She’s right. You had your mind made up about her years ago. But here it is. She’s got the life you wanted, and you damn well won’t admit it to yourself.

A flash of memory leapt into her brain: Carol and Gabriel studying the basics of stratigraphy back at Oxford, one keeping the other awake, even though they both were interested in the class. Long nights spent over raktajino, textbooks, and discussions of the various methods of archeological geophysics.

But that had been decades ago. Carol knew she bore little, if any, resemblance to the person she’d been then. Oh, that part of her was still there, but it was buried so deep, only being around Gabriel again had even cracked the carefully crafted box she’d shoved those emotions into years ago. Even if time hadn’t added more levels of change to her own personality, the Dominion War had definitely made up for it in spades. If it had done that for her, why couldn’t it have done the same for Inana or Gabriel?

Fortunately, Bart chose that moment to save her behind. “I’ve got it.”

“What?” both women asked, turning toward him.

Bart pointed toward the paper with the rubbing. “You were right to take this rubbing, Inana. It’s High Gretharan, but it’s not that far removed from the Vigenère cipher. Letheans don’t quite grasp the concept of hiding something in plain sight. They figure if they can’t see it telepathically, they’ll root around in the person’s mind until they can. Whoever carved this must not have shared the decryption. There’s no way anyone could have known what this meant without experience.”

Carol clapped a hand down on his shoulder. “I knew that genius mind of yours would come in handy. So, what’s it say?”

The women flanked Bart at the table. Faulwell pointed at a particularly ornate glyph, one that looked almost Egyptian in its intricacy. “See this? It’s the glyph for ‘battle’ or ‘attack.’ But over here,” he said, pointing toward a glyph that more resembled a shield than anything Carol could recall seeing, “that one can have two meanings: either ‘protect’ or ‘deflect.’”

“So we’re dealing with something that can protect against a Lethean attack?” Corsi asked, stepping over to the table. “That would be really handy.”

“Not necessarily,” Bart said. He pointed toward a bizarre circular glyph near the bottom of the rubbing. “This, this usually gives the connotation of enclosing. I’ll be damned. These are instructions on how to use something—this obelisk, probably—to deflect a Lethean attack. Inana, did you find anything buried around the obelisk, or maybe inside it?”

Inana visibly thought about it. “Yeah. I think…” She wandered between two of the large tables, sifting through the padds, books, and other paraphernalia before coming up with a small, cube-shaped stone. From the way her body leaned forward when she carried it, it must have weighed a lot more than it looked. “There was a crevasse in the obelisk. Inside we found three of these.”

“Three?” Carol asked, raising an eyebrow. “Where are the other two?”

“In the artifact tent. Paul was cleaning the other two for study. Why?”

“Trivarum olibece,” Bart said. “With the three taken, freedom is loosed.”

That was when the light went off in Carol’s mind. “A ay olibece tubia muci.”

Inana gave her a puzzled look. “And freedom requires learning and memory?”

Carol nudged Bart aside. Now that she had some kind of idea how the encryption worked, she was able to pull a bit more from the glyphs in the rubbing. A brief glimmer of hope flickered in her mind. “Okay, Bart, tell me if I’m reading this wrong, but from the looks of it, removing these three stones from the obelisk activated some sort of defensive shielding. Any warrior of Grethar within the field would have the full access to all of their training and knowledge. Memory and learning, open to all. Knowledge and power, free to the call.” Her stomach flipped as she raised her eyes to Inana and spoke the next passage. “Only Krialta can make it fall. Krialta holds power over all.”

Corsi raised one blond eyebrow. “Rhyme scheme sucks.”

“Wait a minute,” Inana said. “Did that really say Krialta?”

Bart double-checked Carol’s reading and nodded. “Yeah.”

“Now this is starting to make sense. Gabe thought he’d found a temple.” Inana rummaged around further on the workspace, until she came up with a padd. “Yeah. He mentioned it to me, but the aerial survey didn’t indicate that any structures the size of a temple remained intact.”

“But he still thought one had?” Carol asked.

“Yes.”

“If it’s putting out a field that’s affecting our equipment, he might be right. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest we get these three stones to that temple,” Bart said. “Where did he think it was?”

Inana pulled out the aerial survey of the site. It took her a moment, but she finally pointed to an area that, from the pictures, was overgrown by vegetation. “There. It’s about a kilometer from here.”

“Then let’s go,” Corsi said.

Grabbing four palm beacons from a supply table, Inana handed one to each of them as she said, “Carol, there’s an antivenin kit in that blue carry case. Bring it with us, just in case. Rain tends to bring out some of the meaner reptiles around here. Bart, there are blades for getting through the overgrown land areas against the cabinet. Bring as many as you can. We’ll get the other two stones on the way.”

Sarjenka and Dantas led the way as their motley band of wounded trundled back toward the shuttles. When they finally arrived, Sarjenka opened the hatch on the Kwolek, while Dantas took the others to the Shirley.

“Commander Data, could you please help me get Captain Picard in the rear of this shuttle? He’s got the more severe reaction. The others we should be able to treat in the other shuttle. There’s no room here with the supplies.”

Sarjenka went into the forward part of the shuttle, hoping she might at least be able to get some power going to the equipment. She pressed every button she could reach, but nothing happened. They were stuck with what little light was coming in through the shuttle’s front window.

“Here,” Data said. “Allow me.”

Data tried everything she had, with the same lack of results. “Curious,” he said. Walking back to the rear section of the shuttle, he shifted some of the crates around, and then lifted a small door in the floor. He leaned over, taking a closer look. “Very curious.”

He removed two leads from the floor, then opened a panel on his forearm and plugged the leads into the opening. “Very curious.”

“What?”

“The shuttle appears to be without power. I cannot locate a cause. I cannot even make a connection with the ship’s computer.”

“The thoron field,” Sarjenka said, her resignation working its way into her voice. “It must have expanded.”

Another image flashed in her mind at that point, bringing a stabbing pain with it. This time, it was the bridge of a Starfleet vessel—Galaxy-class if she remembered her ships of Starfleet course simulations correctly—and Captain Picard was standing front and center, disdain in his voice as he spoke to…Data…about her.

In Sarjenka’s mind, the pieces began to fall into place like dominoes, and the wall that had been so carefully constructed fell. “I was on the Enterprise, wasn’t I? When you saved my world. Somehow, I ended up on the Enterprise with you and Data.”

“Yes,” Picard said.

“Why didn’t I remember it until now?”

Data and Picard exchanged a look. The captain gave him a nod. “Tell her,” he said.

Data opened his mouth, and then quickly closed it again. He seemed to think over just exactly what he was supposed to be telling her. Growing impatient, she decided to get the ball rolling. “Somehow, years ago, when you were orbiting Drema IV saving my world, I ended up being taken on board the Enterprise…with you, Commander. Who was the dark-haired woman?”

Data’s eyebrows rose. “Counselor Troi? She was trying to help you, to take you to get a treat, but you would not leave my side.”

“What about the distress call? We have no record of that.”

Picard coughed, pulling himself up in the makeshift bed Data had put together in the back of the shuttle. When he was finally able to stop, his voice rasped as he said, “You.”

Sarjenka’s eyes shot open. “What?”

“Data,” Picard said, gesturing toward Sarjenka with a hand. “Tell her. She has a right to know everything now.”

Machete in hand, Paul cut a swath through the forest ahead of Sonya. “Be careful,” he said. “The snakes around here get nasty in the rain.”

Sonya swallowed hard, aiming the palm beacon straight down at the path ahead of her feet. A snake might not be able to bite through these boots, but this isn’t the way I want to find out. “So, how far ahead is the temple?” she asked, trying to distract herself from the mental image of a ground full of writhing serpents. It was giving her the creeps.

“A few more meters,” Paul said.

He took another step, and then stopped. When she raised her light to his face, he’d lifted a finger to his lips.

She stopped as well, listening to the forest around them. In the distance, she could hear a cutting noise similar to Paul’s machete through the overgrowth. Paul drew the gun and pulled back the hammer, waiting. After the looters, she couldn’t blame him for wanting to be ready, and drew the gun she’d brought. She’d only fired a projectile weapon one time, back on Teneb, but she thought she could remember how to do it. Her sister had learned how to shoot a projectile weapon years ago, back on Vieques, thanks to their grandfather thinking Belinda more capable of taking care of things if the family were ever in danger.

Belinda.

The image of her sister’s mocking face reappeared in her mind. A hand touched her back, and Sonya’s mind screamed.

Corsi, Carol, and Bart followed Inana through the forest from the work tent toward where the archaeologist believed the temple to be. The stones had been nowhere to be found in the work tent, but when Inana had seen two machetes gone and the trunk where Christine had placed the guns opened, she had immediately suspected someone was trying to get them to the temple as well. The weight of the stone was heavy in Carol’s hand as they walked, following the cut path as closely as they could.

Until they all heard Sonya Gomez cry out.

Then caution went to the wind, and the foursome ran down the path toward the sound of the scream. When they got there, Cunningham was standing silent, staring in amazement at Gomez, who had collapsed to the ground.

“Paul!” Inana said, shaking him by the shoulders. “Paul! What’s happening? What happened to Commander Gomez?”

Cunningham blinked, seeming to come out of a trance. “No,” he whispered. His right hand, which had been hanging at his side with the palm beacon on Sonya’s twisted grimace, opened further, and one of the stones fell to the grass at his feet.

Inana picked it up, rolling it around in her hand. “Paul, this is the one you were working on. Where’s the third stone?”

On the ground at his feet, Sonya was sobbing at something only she could see. She thrashed around for a moment, beating on Cunningham’s boots as though she were trying to beat an attacker. Paul didn’t even flinch.

“Dr. Cunningham!” Corsi said, using the sharpest commanding tone Carol had ever heard out of the security chief. “Can you hear us?”

“Gone,” Paul said. “It’s all gone.”

“He’s having a hallucination,” Inana said. She quickly and carefully patted down both Cunningham and Sonya, looking for the third stone. Carol began to worry when Inana slowly rose back to her feet. “It’s not here.”

“What?” Corsi said.

“The looters. They must have taken it.”

Carol could hear Corsi’s teeth grinding.

“Inana,” Bart said, venturing into the conversation. “We need that third stone. The obelisk is clear on that much.”

“I know. Gabriel doesn’t have it. We all agreed that the artifacts would remain in the work tent unless we were actively looking at them. Gabriel was only working with the one we have with us. The other two were supposed to be left in the work tent. If there’s only one there, then the looters must have gotten it.”

Carol and Bart exchanged a puzzled look. “Nobody else could have been working on it?”

Inana shook her head. “Paul was still cleaning and photographing the third one. The second one was in storage. If he’s only got one, the other’s gone.”

Corsi trained her palm beacon back over the path, and then followed it with a resolute step.

“Where are you going?” Carol asked.

“To get Vale,” she replied. “We’ve got looters to find. If we can’t find them, we’re all screwed.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

This is TERRI OSBORNE’s third trip aboard the da Vinci, following Malefictorum (the landmark fiftieth installment of the S.C.E. series) and Progress (which kicked off the six-part What’s Past miniseries). Terri’s short fiction has appeared in the Star Trek anthologies Deep Space Nine: Prophecy and Change, New Frontier: No Limits, and Voyager: Distant Shores. Forthcoming are That Sleep of Death, the fourth part of the six-eBook Slings and Arrows, celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation; and “Good Queen, Bad Queen, I Queen, You Queen” in the Doctor Who: Short Trips anthology The Quality of Leadership, both due out in spring of 2008. Terri is also working on several other projects that will take her to the Ireland of the past, the Mars of the future, and other places both near and far. Find out more at her website at www.terriosborne.com.