Allegiance in Exile Page 3

  Clearly a tool or a weapon of some sort, the object defied explanation. Sharpened not only at its pointed ends but along its edges, it would slice through the flesh of any hand attempting to wield it with any force whatsoever. None of the many examples of the object that the Enterprise crew had seen had been affixed to a handle or shaft, nor did a single one of them possess the balance necessary to make it effective as something hurled.

  In the ground beneath Trinh’s feet—or what passed for the ground in the holographically reconfigured recreation room—she felt a vibration. Though she had been aboard for only a month, Trinh could already distinguish the different sensations imparted through the deck when Enterprise traveled at warp and impulse speeds. As the shaking increased, she could tell that neither of the ship’s drive systems caused it. To the others, she said, “Here they come.”

  Jackie, Jeurys, and Clien all glanced at her before peering back across the savanna. Trinh looked in that direction as well, toward the few small trees that dotted the rise at the far border of the landscape. A low resonance became audible, plainly joined to the trembling ground. It all seemed credible, if not entirely real.

  I don’t smell anything, Trinh realized. The scene, while visually and aurally accurate, lacked any sort of a scent beyond that of the ship’s scrubbed, recirculated air. She detected no musky aroma of soil, no sweet hint of vegetation, no olfactory suggestion at all that she actually stood on the surface of a living world.

  Across from Trinh and her team, atop the rise, a cluster of gray beasts burst into view. Bulky and built low to the ground, with a thick, pebbled hide, they reminded Trinh of the Sunda rhinoceros, a creature from her own homeland, though the Drissana II version ran on three pairs of powerful legs rather than two. Half a dozen of the great, single-horned animals ran together, their movements graceful and harmonious, the individuals flowing as one, like the currents of a swift river. Their feet thundered against the ground, the group surging left and right across the countryside, as though with no particular destination, but simply running wild.

  Off to the right, near where the creatures would pass, one of the humanoid inhabitants of Drissana II appeared. Dark-skinned and thin, he wore a band of long fronds that reached from his waist to just above his knees. He did not walk into the scene or emerge from hiding in the grass, but simply materialized in place. Though the man’s entrance wanted for verisimilitude, Trinh knew it would suffice for their purposes.

  Even as the creatures sighted the humanoid and cut in another direction, the man raised his hand and heaved toward the herd a duplicate of the object Trinh herself held. Though such an act in real life would have cut into his palm and fingers, the team wanted to test the efficacy of using the object as a thrown weapon; they even theorized that he could have protected his hand with leaves or a piece of animal hide. It wobbled through the air, flopping lazily end over end in flight, until it struck the closest creature squarely in the middle of its hulking body. The would-be weapon dropped to the ground, ineffective, while the targeted but clearly uninjured animal continued running with the herd.

  Trinh watched the beasts cross the final expanse of the grassland. Just a few seconds later, they all vanished, the cacophony of their passage abruptly dropping to an unnatural silence. Trinh turned and saw that the Drissana II humanoid had also disappeared. Coding the simulation for greater realism would have required more time and effort, and so they’d chosen to focus only on what they required to conduct their experiments.

  “Well, that’s one hypothesis refuted,” said Jackie Trieste. She had long, brunette hair, arranged into a beehive atop her head, and deep, brown eyes. A human in her late twenties and younger than Trinh by almost a decade, she nevertheless had quite a bit of experience in space. Unlike Trinh, Jackie had entered Starfleet Academy immediately after completing her secondary education, taking her scientific instruction coincident with her starship training. She’d so far spent seven years as an active member of Starfleet, aboard several different vessels, a fact that made Trinh uncomfortable serving as her superior.

  Jeurys and Clien had traced comparable paths through the Academy and into space, as had the majority of personnel in both the archaeology and anthropology departments. Trinh, on the other hand, had greater depths of education and fieldwork in her chosen subjects, and as a science specialist, had taken an abbreviated Starfleet curriculum. She had earned her baccalaureate and master’s degrees at Hanoi National University, and both of her doctorates at the University of Alpha Centauri. She also boasted membership in several professional organizations, including the Federation Register of Xenoanthropology and the prestigious Nova Ares Fellowship of Archaeologists. Of greater significance, she’d participated in a wide range of scientific expeditions, mostly in the Sol and Alpha Centauri systems, but also on Tellar and Ophiucus III.

  Ophiucus, Trinh thought, the name instantly dredging up unwanted images in her memory. She could have—perhaps should have—recalled the beauty of New Dakar, the many exhibitions of art throughout the bohemian colony, even the dig in which she’d participated on the periphery of the settlement. Instead, her mind conjured up only the cold, stark interior of the hospital there.

  Trinh felt herself shudder, chilled by the inalterable past. She hoped that none of her colleagues had seen her tremble, and felt grateful when she turned to see that Clien had started across the veld, drawing the attention of Jackie and Jeurys. The archaeologist parted the brownish green stalks with his hands, the blue of his Andorian flesh standing out against the sea of color, until he reached the area where the grass lay flat, trampled by the rhinoceros-like beasts. He peered about, then trotted to a spot where he reached down and retrieved the simulacrum of the object thrown by the native of Drissana II.

  Clien turned back and regarded Trinh and the others across the prairie. “Perhaps it’s the simulation,” he said. “Just because it didn’t work here doesn’t mean it wouldn’t in real life.”

  “We’ll check our parameters again,” Trinh said, “but I don’t think that’s it. We were very diligent in spelling out all the details for Specialist Hardy. The simulation might not be perfect in terms of what it looks like or sounds like—” Or what it smells like, Trinh thought. “—but the size, shape, and keenness of the weapon are accurate, the force with which a native could throw it, the texture and density of the creature’s hide. I believe we got enough of the details correct to demonstrate that the inhabitants of Drissana Two can’t possibly hunt these animals in this way.”

  Clien held up the still unidentified object. “But then what is this?” he asked, the slight accent with which he pronounced the words in Federation Standard insufficient to mask his vexation. He walked back through the tall grass to rejoin his colleagues.

  “I share your frustration,” Trinh said. She looked down at the object in her own hand. She wondered how something so simple in form could prove so inexplicable.

  “Maybe if we used vines to attach it to the end of a wooden husk,” Jeurys suggested. The Dominican had a swarthy complexion and dark coloring. “We could fashion a spear out of it.”

  “Or we could attempt to balance it by applying mud from the riverbank to smooth out its shape,” Jackie offered.

  Trinh shook her head. “Even if we could craft this into the head of a spear, you observed no evidence on Drissana Two that the natives did so. And evening out its aerodynamics with mud would necessarily blunt its sharp edges, which would be counterproductive if this thing really is a weapon.”

  “It just about has to be,” Clien said. “We know the meat of those animals constituted a considerable portion of the natives’ diet.” The Enterprise crew’s investigation of Drissana II had lasted several days, but while more than one tribe had been recorded cooking and eating the flesh of the creatures, none of the natives had been seen killing or capturing those or any other animals.

  “At this point,” Trinh said, holding the object up before her face, “I’d be willing to speculate that the inhabitan
ts of Drissana Two used this to hypnotize the creatures into being their dinner.” She smiled along with her joke.

  For a moment, nobody said anything, obviously lost in their own thoughts. Finally, Jackie said, “It can’t be that complicated. The natives just aren’t that advanced.”

  “No,” Trinh agreed. Then, tilting her head upward, she said, “Computer.”

  “Ready,” came the immediate response. The ship’s computer spoke with a stilted female voice.

  “Can you display a static, three-dimensional, life-sized image of the six-legged creature we’ve been watching?” Trinh asked.

  “Affirmative.”

  “Do so,” Trinh ordered.

  The air a few meters in front of the scientists shimmered for a moment, almost like the effect of a transporter, then solidified into one of the Drissana II beasts. Trinh walked up to it, and her colleagues followed along with her. She moved to the midsection of the animal, then reached toward it, tentative, unsure what she would feel. As she understood it, the capacity to reproduce or mimic environments and physical objects in the rec room relied on a mix of progressive holography, basic transporter technology, and software engineering. For all of that, though, Trinh expected that her hand might simply pass through the replica of the beast, the animal betraying its existence as merely a cohesive packet of photons. Instead, her fingertips tapped against an uneven surface, no warmer or cooler than the ambient temperature. It felt hard and unyielding, and she said so.

  “That’s how the computer created it,” Clien said. “That doesn’t necessarily reflect reality.”

  “Let’s see,” Trinh said. “Computer.”

  “Ready.”

  “Is this how the creature actually feels?” Trinh asked.

  “The question is nonspecific,” replied the computer. “Please rephrase.”

  “When I touch the hide of the simulation of the creature,” she said, “are my resulting tactile sensations the same as if I touched a living example of it?”

  “Negative,” the computer said.

  Trinh felt herself deflate. She’d understood that holographic technology worked well enough to employ as a diagnostic tool. “Explain.”

  “The outer surface of the creature is not composed of organic matter, but is an approximation,” the computer said. “The re-created hide has the same surface geometry and the same hardness as specified in sensor readings of the creature.”

  Trinh nodded, then looked to Clien and the others. “So this may not feel like a living animal,” she said, “but it still demonstrates that the inhabitants of Drissana Two certainly can’t use this object against them.” She closed her empty hand into a fist and rapped her knuckles against the gray hide. It sounded as though she knocked on a thick, wooden door.

  Jeurys stepped forward and also rapped his hand against the side of the faux creature. “No,” he said. “There’s no way that this object, even if they threw it with a great deal of force, could penetrate the creature’s hide.”

  Trinh allowed her gaze to trace the contours of the animal. She stopped at the spot where the middle leg on that side attached to the body. She leaned in and touched all around the area, which felt as hard to her as the rest of the hide. But then Trinh lowered herself to her knees and reached up along the creature’s underbelly. “It’s soft,” she declared, then looked up at her colleagues. “The animal would be vulnerable here.”

  “But that still doesn’t explain how the natives could have used this weapon to attack that part of the creature,” Clien noted.

  “No, but—” Trinh started, but then another thought occurred to her. “Wait,” she said as she climbed back to her feet. “Computer.”

  “Ready.”

  “Reset the simulation of the creature,” Trinh said. “Place it lying on its side on the ground.”

  The image of the animal dissolved into thin air, as though it had never been, but then it reappeared as Trinh had commanded. She dropped to her knees once more, but instead of reaching for the creature’s flank or the underside of its body, she placed her palm and fingers against the flat, circular bottom of its middle feet, first one and then the other. She peered up at her crewmates. “Feel this,” she said. “It’s soft.” As proof of her claim, she pushed against one of the creature’s soles, which dimpled beneath the pressure.

  “I don’t see it,” Jeurys said. “They throw their weapons at the animal’s feet?”

  “No,” Clien said, obviously understanding Trinh’s point. He crouched down and ran a hand along the base of the creature’s foot. “They don’t throw the weapons at all.”

  Trinh took hold of the stone object with both hands and held it just above the ground, its shallow tip oriented upward, its long, tapering end pointing down. “Imagine a series of these set into the soil across the grassland,” she said. “When the herds run through, some of them would inevitably step on them.”

  Jackie’s mouth opened in an expression of sudden understanding. “They step on the protruding points and wound their feet,” she said. “They effectively hobble themselves.”

  “And once they go down,” Jeurys continued the reasoning, “they expose their vulnerable bellies.”

  “That’s brilliant,” Jackie said.

  Trinh stood back up. “Well, it’s a theory, anyway,” she said. “One we obviously need to test.”

  Clien nodded. “We’ll have to reset the parameters of our simulation so that—” The up-and-down call of a boatswain’s whistle interrupted him.

  “Bridge to Ensign Trinh,” came the voice of Enterprise’s first officer.

  Off to her left, a flat section of bulkhead appeared as if by magic in the middle of the grassland, putting the lie to the holographic trickery of the rec room. The bulkhead contained the doors that led out to the corridor, along with a control panel and an intercom. Surprised, Trinh looked to her colleagues, as though they might explain why Commander Spock wanted to speak with her. In her few weeks aboard ship, she had never been summoned from the bridge. Jackie, Jeurys, and Clien simply gazed back at her in silence, until Jackie finally said, “Shouldn’t you see what he wants?”

  Trinh blinked, then turned and hurried over to the bulkhead, where she reached up and activated the intercom with a touch to the button there. “This is Ensign Trinh.”

  “Ensign, you have been assigned to a landing party,” Spock said. “We will be visiting an alien city, evidently abandoned, on the first planet of star system R-Seven-Seven-Five. The air temperature at our landing site is nine degrees Celsius. Outfit yourself accordingly.”

  “Yes, sir,” Trinh said. “When, sir?”

  “Report to the transporter room at once.”

  “Yes, sir,” Trinh replied, feeling ridiculous for having posed the question. “Understood, sir.” She wondered to which of the ship’s transporter rooms she should report, but she didn’t want to ask. Fortunately, she recalled that only one personnel transporter remained regularly active, and that the turbolift would automatically take her there when she specified her destination.

  “Bridge out.”

  Trinh thumbed the intercom off, then turned to face her team. “I guess I have to go,” she said.

  “Looks like the new girl gets to have all the fun,” Jackie said, smiling.

  “I guess that’s why they made me an officer,” Trinh said. All of the personnel in the departments she headed carried enlisted ranks. “While I’m away, contact Specialist Hardy and see if she can help you reprogram the simulation.” Trinh realized she still held the copy of the stone object from Drissana II. She held it up and said, “Let’s see if we can verify our theory about how the natives use these.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Clien, the most senior of the three scientists.

  Trinh dropped the stone object to the simulated ground leading up to the bulkhead, then tapped a button on the control panel. The doors slid open. She dashed out into the corridor and to the nearest turbolift. After briefly stopping by her quarters to retrieve her field jac
ket and specially configured tricorder, she headed directly for the transporter room.

  As Trinh arrived there, she felt both exhilarated and anxious about participating in her first Enterprise landing party. She relished the opportunity to explore the unknown, but in her month aboard ship, she’d grown unsettled about her choice to join Starfleet. She had come to understand that she might have been motivated primarily by a desire to run away from her own past, rather than by her stated aspiration of seeing more of the galaxy. Despite Trinh’s Starfleet training and the service’s conviction that she could function within a strict command hierarchy, she worried about that. As a scientist, she cooperated with peers, rather than issuing or taking orders. She’d so far found it awkward and even unsatisfying to lead people with far more shipboard experience than she, even though her professional expertise justified her position.

  Trinh felt more concern, though, about how she would handle acting in a subordinate role. During her month on the ship, she’d met Captain Kirk just once, when he’d greeted her in the transporter room after she’d beamed aboard with three other new crew members. He seemed strong and confident to her, projecting the sort of self-assurance she expected in a person who commanded one of Starfleet’s most advanced vessels, who regularly took that vessel into the unexplored reaches of the galaxy, and who maintained responsibility for the lives of more than four hundred people while doing so.

  The captain intimidates me, she thought, and then had to admit more than that: the first officer daunted her as well. She’d met with the commander several times since arriving on board. In his capacity as the ship’s exec, Mister Spock had informed her of her precise duties on Enterprise, and as the chief science officer, he’d introduced her to the staffs of the archaeology and anthropology departments, briefed her about their current research and analysis efforts, and doled out her assignments.