Star Trek: That Which Divides (2 page)

Gesturing toward the viewscreen, Arens said, “All right, let’s get down to business. What can you tell me about this thing?”

Boma replied, “Not much; at least, not yet. As the initial reports indicated, it’s about eight hundred thousand kilometers from the system’s fourth planet. According to my calculations, it maintains a consistent elliptical orbit with a duration of seventeen point six days.” He paused, pointing to the screen and indicating the dark area at the center of the energy field. “Most of the time, it’s impassable, but the rift we’re seeing appears at intervals that compute out to be approximately two point seven Earth years, give or take
as much as two months. The rift stays open for a period of about thirty-eight days, again plus or minus a day or three, though it doesn’t just close; it shrinks over a period of several days before fading altogether. From the reports we’ve received, once the rift’s closed, that’s it until the next time it opens. No way in or out.” He gestured toward the screen. “The locals have a name for it that translates more or less as ‘the Pass.’ Seems appropriate enough for me.”

“Damnedest thing I’ve ever heard of,” Arens said, reaching up to rub the back of his bald head. Since being given the assignment to observe this phenomenon, he had familiarized himself with whatever information he could find on the Kondaii system, or System 965, as it had been catalogued after initial surveys by unmanned Starfleet reconnaissance probes more than a decade earlier. From the reports he had read, such as those provided by Federation first-contact teams that had visited the Kondaii system more than a year earlier as well as the most recent accounts submitted by continuing contact specialists and diplomatic envoys, the people who called the fourth planet, Dolysia, their home had always been aware of the phenomenon. Like their sun or the pair of moons orbiting their planet or even the other seven worlds occupying the Kondaii system, the mysterious anomaly had always been a part of the Dolysian people’s history.

“What about its interior?” Arens asked. “Anything on the moon or planetoid or whatever it is hiding in there?”

The science officer shook his head. “Not much, really. The locals call it ‘Gralafi,’ which in their language translates to something like ‘playful child,’ no doubt owing to the way it plays hide-and-seek from within the anomaly. It has a Class-M environment like the Dolysians’ own planet, so I
suppose that’s a huge plus.” He shrugged. “By all accounts, it may be a dwarf planet, but there’s no way to know if it originally was part of this system and became trapped within that region, or if it’s from somewhere else. We won’t know anything until we get a closer look at it, run some scans, and see if it shares any properties with the planets here.”

“Regardless of where it came from,” Arens said, “or where it might belong, the Dolysians have certainly made the best of it.” The revelation that a spatial body had been discovered inside the rift residing within a form of pocket or other compartmentalized region of space had come as a surprise to him. Even more astonishing was learning that the Dolysians had explored and even settled upon it, having found a means of working with the rift’s sporadic if mostly predictable accessibility. A largely self-sufficient mining colony, constructed on the planetoid decades earlier, now played a vital role in meeting the energy production needs of several of Dolysia’s nation-states. “This mineral they extract, erinadium? It’s present on the home planet’s two moons, right?”

Boma replied, “Yes, sir, and it’s also on the planet itself, though in all three cases it’s not found in nearly the same abundance. The Dolysians had made the transition to using the material to meet their energy needs decades before the first probes into the anomaly found the planetoid and discovered its rich erinadium deposits. Once they knew that, there was a focused effort to get a permanent facility up and running. According to their projections, there’s enough erinadium on the planetoid to keep the lights on for a couple of centuries.”

“Wow,” Arens said, impressed at the effort the Dolysians
had expended and the rewards they seemed to be enjoying for their work. “Well, that’d certainly justify the risk you’d think would be inherent in a project of this magnitude. On a different note, it suggests the planetoid might be native to this system, after all. It’ll be interesting to see if we can offer them some new insight.”

Boma replied, “That’s going to be easier said than done, though, as our sensor scans are being scattered as they come into contact with the rift’s . . . the
anomaly
’s outer boundary.”

Noting the other man’s change of word choice, Arens cocked his head as he regarded his friend. “You don’t think it’s an interspatial rift?” The idea that this might be a doorway of sorts—to another part of the universe or to another universe or reality entirely—made the captain’s mind race to consider the possibilities. “It wouldn’t be the first time something like that’s been encountered, after all.” Shrugging, he added, “Though it’d be a first for me.”

“Rifts such as those,” Boma replied, “at least the ones we know about, have usually been found to have some common characteristics. Energy distortion fields, chroniton or verteron particle emissions, time dilation effects, and so on. I’m not picking up anything like that from this thing.”

Arens frowned, crossing his arms before reaching up to stroke his thin, close-cropped beard. “Absence of such characteristics doesn’t automatically rule out this being some kind of interspatial rift or conduit.”

“Which is why I’m going to stick with my story of not having the first clue what it is, sir,” Boma said. “If it
is
a conduit, then what’s on the other side? Where’s the other end, where does it go, and what—or who—might be there?”

“Those are all interesting questions which we have also
asked, Captain, though we have been unable to answer them.”

Arens and Boma turned in response to the new voice to see the
Huang Zhong
’s first officer, Commander April Hebert, standing near the bridge’s doorway. With her was the guest to whom the ship was playing host, a Dolysian female who earlier had introduced herself as Rzaelir Zihl du Molidin. Though she was humanoid in appearance, at least in a general sense, there still were several exterior differences in her physiology when compared to humans. Her skin was a pale yellow with a hint of green; a Vulcan-like pigmentation, Arens thought. The pupils of her eyes were almost devoid of color, with only the slightest shade of red encircling tiny irises. Rather than cartilage forming a nose, there was only a slight indentation beneath her eyes with a trio of small holes which Arens took to be nostrils. The upper portion of her rounded skull flared outward at a point just above small openings on each side, which seemed to serve as her ears. What little hair she possessed was confined to a single narrow strip that began just above the groove between her eyes and continued up and over her head to the nape of her long, thin neck. From there, the hair hung down below her shoulders, braided and intertwined with a strand of black material. The result resembled a ponytail, which hung down across the front of the Dolysian’s right shoulder so that Arens could see a decorative silver band encircling its end. Her clothing consisted of a single-piece, floor-length gown tailored to her trim, almost petite physique. The garment had been fashioned from a shiny material that reminded Arens of silk, colored a light tan with threads of white and silver woven into the fabric.

Smiling, Arens said, “Advisor Zihl, welcome to the
bridge.” When he had all but choked during his first attempt at mimicking her pronunciation, the Dolysian had taken apparent pity on him by explaining that in her society—one of however many that called her planet home—names acted as a means of honoring respected family members. When a member died, others in the family might be inspired to add a portion of that person’s name to their own, a process that continued throughout the lives of those offering such tributes. In the case of Rzaelir Zihl du Molidin, Zihl was her given name, and her title of “advisor” was given to her while operating in her role as one of numerous liaisons between the Federation and the various Dolysian governments.

“Thank you, Captain,” she replied, bowing her head for a brief moment. “It is an honor to be here.”

Arens repeated Zihl’s gesture. “I hope you enjoyed the tour, such as it was.”

“The fastest five minutes you’ll ever spend,” Hebert replied, reaching up to brush a lock of her dark hair away from her eyes. As though attempting to decipher the meaning of the first officer’s words, Zihl’s expression changed to what Arens thought might be a look of confusion.

“What she means is that because our ship is so small, such tours often don’t take that much time,” he said, before offering another smile. Starfleet linguistic experts had done a phenomenal job creating a database from which universal translation protocols assisted in communicating with the Dolysian people, using more than one hundred of their known languages. Despite such an achievement, bridging the gap with respect to odd turns of phrase unfamiliar to one party or the other would always present a challenge.

Boma added, “On the other hand, it’s easy to keep clean.”

Archer
-class scouts were designed for speed, their missions entailing getting in and out of places in a hurry and often working in stealth. Their size made them ideal for clandestine surveillance duties, such as monitoring activities along borders separating Federation territory from that of rival powers such as the Klingon and Romulan empires. The
Huang Zhong
, like her sister vessels of this type, possessed few frills or creature comforts for its fourteen-person crew to enjoy. Commander Hebert, like the ship’s other female crew members, wore the female officer’s version of uniform tunic and trousers rather than the skirt variant. Given the vessel’s lack of turbolifts, the uniform choice made for traversing the ship’s ladders and crawl spaces in a more dignified manner.

Even billet space aboard the
Huang Zhong
was at a premium, with only the captain and first officer entitled to a private cabin. As for the rest of the ship’s complement, though each of them was formally assigned to one of the four remaining crew compartments, each room only possessed one berth, necessitating the practice of “hot-bunking,” or sharing the beds by virtue of working and sleeping during different duty shifts. Given the often fluctuating nature of life aboard ship, any open bunk was fair game to anyone when their off-duty shift came around. The situation was tolerable, because most of the
Huang Zhong
’s missions were of limited duration and were interspersed with rotations at the ship’s home station, Starbase 23. That the crew was one of the most tight-knit groups with which Arens had ever served also went a long way toward defusing any problems that might arise
from being stuffed into such a compact vessel for lengthy periods of time.

Remember that
, Arens warned himself,
when Hebert sticks you with the bar tab our first night back in port
.

Seemingly satisfied with his explanation, Zihl nodded. “As I said, the commander is an excellent guide. Your technology is wondrous, particularly your engines which allow you to travel faster than light.” She paused, glancing toward the viewscreen. “Such feats are only fodder for stories to my people. Our attempts at interstellar travel must seem so quaint to you, but I hope that one day we too will be able to move among the stars as you do.”

“You will,” Hebert replied, “one day.”

Zihl said, “We have been told by your diplomatic envoys that it is atypical for your Federation even to interact with a weaker species such as mine until after we have reached that technological milestone.”

“Not weaker,” Boma countered, his tone light and respectful, “just less advanced. Our laws prohibit us from revealing ourselves to such a culture, or to interfere with it, except in very special circumstances.”

When Zihl’s expression once again conveyed her lack of understanding, Arens added, “We believe that every society has the right to develop on its own, without influence from outside parties such as ourselves.”

“That seems like a noble sentiment,” Zihl replied, “though I suspect such a philosophy would be problematic from time to time, such as with my people. I am grateful you chose to make an exception on our behalf.”

Though the budding relationship between Dolysia and the Federation was continuing to grow and prosper since formal first-contact protocols had been initiated fourteen
months earlier, the initial meeting between the two almost did not come to pass. Only fortunate happenstance had seen to it that the
U.S.S. Resolute
, a Starfleet border patrol ship on assignment several sectors away from the Kondaii system in Federation space, crossed paths with a Dolysian cargo freighter adrift in space.

“It was a pretty bold experiment,” Boma said, “converting that old freighter into a sleeper ship.”

Zihl nodded. “I imagine you find such notions rather simplistic, given your ability to travel faster than light itself.”

“Not at all,” Hebert replied. “Hibernation ships are a normal first step when developing interstellar travel. Our planet did the same thing, hundreds of years ago.”

“Ours was an experiment,” Zihl said, “testing whether long-term cryogenics would be a feasible means of traveling to the other planets in our system. I am not familiar with the specifics of the mission, but I do not believe interstellar flight was a goal, at least not so early in the process.”

Arens recalled what he had been told of the Dolysians’ initial forays into long-duration spaceflight. A trio of scientists had volunteered to be placed in hibernation for a period of several years while the vessel transited the Kondaii system. During the flight, an error in the ship’s onboard computer system caused an unplanned ignition of the vessel’s engines, sending the freighter on a trajectory that eventually sent it out of the system and into interstellar space. Engineers on Dolysia remained in contact with the ship for a time while frantic plans were considered in order to attempt a retrieval. Though contact with the vessel was sporadic, a minor update to the computer’s software allowed the computer to extend the crew’s planned hibernation cycle. As the ship continued to travel farther away,
a more extensive update to alter its course and redirect it back toward Dolysia failed, taking with it any hope—realistic or otherwise—of rescue.