Ket clapped her hands, hopped up, and ran out of the room. When she came back, she was carrying a model of a space ship. “It’s a toy,” she said. “But it’s a fair replica of the ships we used to fetch the water from Mars. It opens up to reveal a cut away of the inner workings. It’s to scale.”
Garcia examined the ship and immediately began an analysis. There were large chambers where water had been stowed, but even ten of these ships couldn’t account for all the surface water of Mars being moved in two hundred years. He made a comment to that effect.
“We took the water into orbit, froze it, and ejected it like ice cubes,” Gilgamesh said. “Once a certain mass of water was achieved, a ship would push the collection of cubes back to Terra. Once in orbit, they were dropped into the atmosphere. We only lost ten percent due to solar activity. This method was slow, and not effective, but it gave us a start. Halfway through this project we perfected simple transporter technology and we aligned the ships up in a series and we transported water directly from the surface, transmitting the beam from ship to ship and mega relays to mega relays, until all the surface water from mars was transferred to terra. We moved more water in the last ten weeks of the project than we did in the entire two hundred year span of hauling.”
“That’s just crazy. It would take more energy to dematerialize, transmit, and rematerialize that much water than it would to just create new water molecules using a pattern replicator.”
“We didn’t have pattern replicators,” Gil said. “We could turn simple matter into energy, and because it naturally wanted to revert to its original form, the amount of energy to sustain it in an energetic form took less energy than physically pushing its mass through space, with only a twenty percent loss of in original mass.”
“The simple transporters frequency were modulated to be in harmonic resonance with the molecular frequency of H2O, so only water was moved,” Ket added. “Once energized, it wanted to flow, like it had a will of its own.”
Garcia frowned, dismissing Ket’s supernatural perspective. He focused on the ship, since he didn’t want to get into a philosophical argument. They were successful at moving the water, and that was all that mattered.
“Are these Ion engines?” Garcia asked, more concerned about the logistics of saving the Voth. The transporter solution explained away many of the questions Garcia had had about how they had moved so much water with only ten of these ships. The simple transporter with harmonic resonance tuning did explain why converting that much mass directly to energy and back again was less energy than creating matter directly from energy. The fact that matter tended to want to remain in a matter state, and energy pretty much wanted to stay in an energy state, was a paradoxical statement since in reality matter and energy were the same thing, just as light was both wave and particle at the same time. Still the amount of energy required to transport as much mass as they did would require either fusion or matter anti-matter engines, which meant warp drive was probably right around the corner.
“Yes. We have more efficient fusion engines now, burning deuterium fuel for a maximum thrust of one quarter the speed of light, but that’s still not practical for interstellar travel,” Gilgamesh said.
“You’re right and putting crews into suspended animation carries its own sets of dangers,” Garcia said, closing his eyes. He sighed, coming to terms with the potential of breaking the Prime Directive. “What if I gave you warp drive technology? Would you leave this system and never come back?”
“You’d ask us to leave our homes?” Gilgamesh demanded.
“I’m asking you to live,” Garcia said. “Giving you this technology would be a violation of my laws and a code of ethics, so asking you to leave this system, hell even the Alpha Quadrant, seems like a small price to ask to save your people from extinction. You’ve said you’ve already been collecting samples to prevent the loss of your bio diversity from the approaching ice age. Just consider this an extension of that effort, but instead of saving it from an ice age, you’re saving it from complete annihilation by going and finding a new home world to call your own. And maybe, one day in the distant future, twenty million years or so, our two people can meet again, realize that we share a common ancestor and genetic heritage, and become fast friends. This current age is coming to an end, but it doesn’t have to be all she wrote.”
“I don’t have the authority to make the kind of decision you’re asking me to make. I will have to confer with the Counsel,” Gilgamesh said.
“Dad, do you think that’s wise?” Ket asked. “You wanted to put Tam down. What do you suppose the Counsel will want to do with him?”
“Something of this magnitude must be brought before the people,” Gilgamesh said. “I will not waver in this. Will you speak before the counsel? Will you tell them what you have told me?”
“I will,” Garcia said. “Will you help me rescue my friends and give me a spaceship in return for providing you with warp technology?”
“I can not make you any promises,” Gilgamesh said.
“Can I have access to your technology? A computer, or the transporters?” Garcia asked.
Gilgamesh bobbed his head while considering. “What you ask seems reasonable,” Gilgamesh said. “But I want to wait and see what the counsel says.”
“Dad, he’s offering us technology,” Ket said.
“Your young mind is too easily influenced,” Gilgamesh snapped. “He could be lying. He could be an alien invader intending to bomb us with asteroids.”
“He could, Dad, and if he has the technology to move asteroids, then there is nothing we could do to stop them from destroying us,” Ket said. “And they would have already done so if that was their intent.”
“Maybe he’s a spy, ascertaining our technological prowess before they commit,” Gilgamesh said. “Maybe they don’t have transporters and that is our one advantage over them. We will wait and see what the counsel decides.”
Ket puffed her cheeks out in protest. “Your princess cheeks will not sway my decision in this,” Gilgamesh said. “Now, go get suitably dressed while I make the call.”
Ket did as she was told. Garcia sat down next to the fire and ate some more of the fruit. After all, he decided, it was probably going to be a long day and there was nothing he could do about his friends’ hunger at this juncture.
kjº
Seven of Nine had found a great spot over looking the Gorn village and had been taking tricorder readings when the device alerted her to the approach of a number of air vehicles. She crawled back a little further into the bushes to better conceal herself. A moment later, a number of aircraft, looking very much like old Earth, Apache Helicopters, broke the silence over head and swooped over the Gorn village. Larger, troop moving helicopters hovered and military units began to rappel to the ground. As soon as their feet hit Earth, they swung their weapons around and began to seek out Gorn targets. She recognized the aliens almost immediately: Voth. She quickly scrambled back out of her hiding place, rushed down the hill, and started making her way back to the hide out, keeping to the trees to try and stay out of sight.
Seven halted her steps and took cover behind a tree. Her tricorder suggested her position was surrounded by Voth. She heard what sounded like multiple jeeps in the back ground, struggling with the terrain.
“Hold!” came a voice.
Seven managed to push a button on the tricorder to lock out all functions right before she was shot. The projectile was accompanied by a whisper. It hit her thigh, penetrating her suit, and stung like all get out. She pulled the dart out, frowned, and went down like a sack of potatoes. The next thing she knew was that Garcia was hovering over her.
“You okay?” Garcia asked her.
Seven sat up. “The Voth,” she said.
“You know about them?” Garcia asked.
“I thought they would already be gone by now,” Seven said.
“You know about the Voth?” Garcia asked again.
“They’re a species indigenous to the Delta Quadrant,” Seven said. “Species seven forty three.”
“They’re not from the Delta Quadrant,” Garcia corrected.
“I know,” Seven said. “They’re hadrosaurs, having evolved on Earth. Humans and hadrosaurs share a common ancestor in the primitive amphibian erops, your closest link. I am unable to tell you much more than that other than Voyager encountered them.”
“Voyager?” Garcia asked.
“My ship,” Seven said. Garcia seemed to be hanging for more. “Surely we have better things to discuss.”
“Perhaps, but we seem to have some time to kill,” Garcia said, looking about the cell as if to deliver a point.
“Look, I have determined that I have come from your future, five to ten years in your future, and telling you more information might be detrimental to the timeline,” Seven said.
“We’re all out of time,” Garcia said. He thought about it. “I mean…”
“I know what you mean,” Seven said. “Let’s drop it.”
Elika brought Seven a drink. “They also provided some fruit over there, if you would like,” she said.
“You seem to be taking this well,” Seven said.
“After being thrown in a volcano by those who supposedly loved me and enjoying the presence of gods, this is easy,” Elika said. “Do you gods always have this much fun?”
“We’re not gods,” Afu told her for the umpteenth time.
“What do you mean, fun?” Seven asked.
“We haven’t stopped moving since you took me. This is the first place we have actually sat and had food together and offered to share stories. Can I have one of these?” Elika asked, touching the implant above Seven’s eye.
Seven pushed her hand away. “No,” Seven said. She returned her attention to Garcia. “Tell me what you have learned of the Voth.”
“Well, all I can tell you is that I’ve made friends with one of their scientist, who, strangely enough, goes by the name Gilgamesh,” Garcia said.
Seven surveyed the jail they were in.
“Some friend,” Seven said.
“Tell her the name of the city,” Afu said.
“Why were we all captured?” Seven asked.
“It’s my doing, I’m afraid. I mentioned you to my friend, who reported me to authorities, and then they went looking for you,” Garcia said. “They have limited range scanners, an elaborate artificial satellite system, even transporters, and they can beam anywhere in the world on a whim, though they choose to stick to the cities they’ve created. They seem to be a highly social culture.”
A Voth came to the cell and clucked. “Tammas, I am really sorry for the way my people are treating you and your friends,” she said.
“Seven, this is Ketimer, or Ket for short,” Garcia said, standing up. “Ket, this is Seven of Nine, my friend Afuhaamango, Afu for short, and Elika.”
“You saved my life and this is how you are repaid,” Ket said, clucking and shaking her head. “You’re not even angry.”
“It is what it is,” Garcia said, approaching the bars of his cell, yet careful not to touch them again. “Don’t fret. If I am going to save your people, I will need you to keep your wits about you.”
“You would still help us?” Ket asked. “Even after this?”
“Your people are doing what is natural,” Garcia said. “First Contact with an alien species is always the most difficult of missions. There is always the chance for miscommunication or cultural bias negatively influencing the encounter. Don’t give up on us yet.”
“I was going to ask you not to give up on us,” Ket said, humbled by the message.
A heavily decorated Voth entered, followed by a number of soldiers. He approached Ket, his hands locked behind his back.
“You should not be here,” the Voth said.
“I discovered him, Mod Henlu,” Ket said. “And as the world’s most renowned biologist, I have earned the right to see to their treatment.”
“Biologist, indeed,” Henlu said. “You may have the record for classifying the most new species discovered, but you are hardly an expert in the field. You are reckless, a danger to yourself and society, and further, this is xeno-biology, and no one has any claims on expertise in that field.”
“I do,” Ket argued. “My father and I did the scans and treated this person, so I know more about him than any of you.”
“And I should arrest you for not coming straight to me with this information,” Henlu said. “There is no telling what sort of biological threats he has brought with him. Now go home, or I will throw you in a cell.”
Ket puffed up her lips and cheeks in anger.
“Ket,” Garcia said. “Please, go home. We’ll talk again.”
“But?!” Ket protested.
“Ket, trust me,” Garcia said. “It’s okay.”
Ket cooled her heels. “If he or any of his friends are harmed, I will see you punished for it,” Ket assured him. She departed.
Henlu turned to Garcia, scowling. “I am the Minister of Defense, Henlu,” Henlu said. “I want you to come with me.”
“Alright,” Garcia said.
Seven stood up and Afu took a fighting pose, putting Elika behind him. The soldiers dropped their weapons to the ready position.
“No!” Garcia said, hands up. “No. Afu, Seven, it’s okay. I’m going to go with them.”
Henlu opened the cell and Garcia stepped out. Henlu immediately closed the cell and locked it, before leading the way out of the room. The Soldiers followed, pushing Garcia to make sure he went in the right direction. He was taken to a large meeting hall where literally thousands had gathered to see a spectacle. Every Voth who was someone, and their friends, were present. Members of the Counsel were present, as well as the Ministry of Elders, and the Queen and her royal guards. Garcia was brought forwards and pushed into a clear space where all could lay eyes on him. There were microphones and cameras pointing at him, as well as a number of weapons. He was easily the best lit object in the room, lights shining down on him from all angles, and coming up at him from the floor. The lights made it difficult to see the faces around him, scrutinizing him.
A commotion occurred at the other side of the room and a Gorn male was brought forward. He was perhaps the largest Gorn Garcia had ever seen, but still the Voth managed to shove him into the lime light as if he were merely a human. The difference between Garcia and the Gorn was the fact that the Gorn was bound by chains. It hissed and growled, followed by a guttural sound that erupted in a spit. Garcia had understood its speech, but he was curious if the Voth had a clue.
His answer came soon enough. The Queen looked to one of her minions. “The Gorn has demanded that you let his people go, or face the wrath of god.”
“For invaders, I believe his people are being well treated,” the Queen said. “Is that not so?”
The translator queried the Gorn and Garcia squinted at how badly he spoke Gorn.
“This world is ours. It is the promised land,” the Gorn said. “Now let my people go, or face the wrath of god.”
The translator scratched his head. “He keeps threatening to call his god, my Queen,” the translator said. “His language is very primitive, as well as his understanding. There is no way that his people created the monolith.”
The Queen turned her attention to Garcia. “I am told that you are technologically savvy. Is this true?”
“Yes, your majesty,” Garcia said.
Everyone in the audience clucked in awe that the mammal could speak. The Queen tapped the floor with her staff to return the room to silence. “Your majesty?”
“It’s a term used by my people to denote respect to a Queen or King,” Garcia said. “If there is a title you would prefer I use, I would be happy to comply.”
“You speak well for a mammal,” the Queen said. “One of our religious texts has always warned us to be weary of people who speak well. Question their intent.”
“That is wise. To that end, your majesty, I admit some bias on my part. My first goal is to ensure the safety of my people,” Garcia said. “And the best way to do that at this particular moment is to avoid misunderstandings, so I am trying to choose my words carefully so as not to appear disrespectful. I hope you will forgive me in advance if I trespass cultural boundaries and taboos. It is not my intention to offend, but to communicate and better understand you and your people.”
“Did you bring these Gorn to my planet?” the Queen asked.
“No, your majesty,” Garcia said. “They were here when I arrived.”
“Gilgamesh claims you have said that you arrived here by mistake,” the Queen said. “He claims you say you are from the future.”
“My friends and I were exploring an artifact of Preserver origins, very much like the monolith in the Gorn village, but much grander in scale,” Garcia said. “We inadvertently activated a transporter type device and were brought here with no apparent way to return to our starting point. That starting point is in your future, some twenty millions years or so, give or take a few years.”
“You are from this planet in the future?” the Queen asked.
“My species, homo-sapiens evolved on this planet,” Garcia said. “I was born on an Earth type planet, in a different solar system.”
“There are other planets outside this solar system?” the Queen asked.
“Billions of planets,” Garcia said. “Life is much more abundant than you probably ever imagined. And sentience seems to be the natural progression that life wants to flow towards.”
“We’ll suspend the philosophical debate for now,” the Queen said. “Where is my astronomer?”
A Voth stepped forwards. “Here, my queen.”
“Can you confirm the existence of other planets, outside our solar system?” the Queen asked.
“No, my queen,” the astronomer said.
“May I speak?” Garcia asked.
The Queen looked at him.
Garcia continued. “With all due respect to your astronomer, I believe you have the technology in place to detect planets in other systems. If you observe stars with a radio telescope, you can observe a variation in their frequencies which indicates the presence of planets. The variation is due to a wobble in their center of gravity caused by a shared center of mass. Further, with optical telescopes you can measure the light from these stars, measure the Doppler effect, and if the planet is in front of the star, you can detect a noticeable difference in the visible spectrum, and can fairly well determine what the planet is made of or if it has an atmosphere. I would be happy to point out several stars which will offer the best viewing results, given our relative distance and the optimum size of a planet for viewing that fits your technology, as well as provide you some formulas to help you arrive at the same conclusions…”
“In theory, my Queen, what he is saying sounds plausible,” the astronomer interrupted Garcia.
“But?” the Queen said.
“No one has ever done this before,” he said.
“And why not?” the Queen asked.
“Because, my queen, the question has always been a mute point till now,” the astronomer said. “Even if we proved other planets exist, we can’t get there. No one can travel faster than the speed of light. It’s a waste of time and resources.”
“Then how do you explain his presence?” the Queen asked.
The astronomer shook his head and puffed his cheeks in relative mental discomfort. “I really can’t, my Queen,” he said. “But his transporter explanation is not plausible. If we assume he was converted to energy and beamed from the nearest star to us that energy would propagate through space at the speed of light and would take over forty years to arrive here. So, it makes no sense that he would arrive at his destination before he was actually transmitted. He must have come from the past, not the future.”
The Queen looked to Garcia.
“Sub-quantum transporting could theoretically allow for instantaneous passage to anywhere in the known Universe, even temporal passage to any time in the known Universe, but in this case, I suspect a wormhole in space-time may have been involved,” Garcia said.
The queen looked to the astronomer. It licked its lips and let out a burst of air that puffed his cheeks out in rapid succession until the air was gone.
“Wormholes are interesting theoretical constructs, but nothing more than that,” the astronomer said, his voice a bit nervous. “My Queen.”
“What about his theory that Terra will be struck by an asteroid and destroyed?” the Queen asked.
The astronomer gave a nervous little laugh. “Well, that, actually has always been a fairly possible event,” the astronomer said. “And because of the sudden interest, we have turned all our short range scanning systems towards space to determine if there is a potential threat, my Queen.”
“And?” she asked.
“Well, the full data set is not in, but there does seem to be an immediate threat in the near Terra vicinity,” the astronomer said. “We’re trying to confirm with traditional radar and telescopes, and as soon as I have more information, I can tell you if it will be a near miss or a head on collision. More than likely, it will just glance off our atmosphere and head back out into space, very much like skimming a stone over water, but, well, it’s hard to say, exactly, which is the outcome without further analysis.”
The Queen turned to Garcia. “Can you prevent this asteroid from colliding with Terra?”
“Not with the technology available to me at this time,” Garcia lied. He was fairly certain if he got into the monolith, he could save Terra from being destroyed.
The Queen turned to the astronomer. “Assume this rock is going to hit us. Can we nuke the asteroid?”
“If we were to hit it with all the nukes we have available, all we would do is contaminate the asteroid with nuclear material, which would then be spread through the Earth’s atmosphere and the radiation poisoning would kill whatever the asteroid didn’t kill on impact.”
“What about a mater anti matter bomb?” the Queen asked.
“It would have similar consequences as the nukes and to make the bomb big enough to handle the current threat would potentially due more harm to Terra than letting the asteroid hit us direct,” the astronomer said.
“I want contingency plans,” the Queen said. “I want to know if it’s best to go into orbit and live on our ships, or build underground shelters. Perhaps doing both will guarantee that some of us will survive. We have come too far, been through too much, to simply be lay wasted by a passing stone. I want options. I want them now. Take these creatures back to their holding cells. I don’t like the way they smell.”
CHAPTER NINE
McCoy was alone, sitting at his desk staring out the window, a cup of coffee in his hand, when Garcia arrived via transporter. The office smelled like coffee. It was a bright place, with daylight streaming in from two sides of the room and the view was that of San Francisco bay. An old Earth song began to play in the back of Garcia’s mind and the harder he tried to suppress it, the louder it got. “Seventy-three men sailed up from the San Frisco bay…Ride, Captain, ride, upon your mystery ship…”
“Sit down,” McCoy said, having seen the play of lights of Garcia’s transport reflected in the window.
Garcia took one of the seats in front of McCoy’s desk. McCoy pivoted his chair, set his coffee down, and then leaned forward, his arms resting on the desk. And then he scrunched up his nose.
“Is that you?” he asked.
“Yes,” Garcia sighed.
“Explain how you got here so fast?” McCoy said, trying to ignore the odor.
Garcia explained about the Gateways, given to him by the Grays, and how all his ships are interconnected by this wormhole technology. He named the ships currently at his disposal: the USS Constitution, the IKV Path Finder, the IKV Tempest, previously the SaLing, the Pa Nun, a Romulan War Bird that had been liberated from the Orion pirates during the Bliss incident, and two Gorn stealth predators, also from the same confrontation. The last three were parked in orbit at planet Bliss because Garcia simply lacked the resources to man them. There were other ships in orbit around planet Bliss, but most of them were too badly damaged to be of any service except for spare parts to be sold on the black market, which would not only help fund their secret projects, but it gave him connections to the underworld and the criminal elements which he could use to further his cause.
“That means you have a ship in Earth’s orbit,” McCoy said.
“I do,” Garcia said. “The Path Finder is in orbit, investigating the disappearance of Nikita Carter, which I believe is connected to the disappearance of my own daughter, Tama Orleans.”
“Tama is missing?” McCoy asked, softening a bit.
“It was made to appear as if she ran away, however, the evidence I have suggests she was kidnapped,” Garcia said.
“And do you know who is responsible?” McCoy asked.
“I have a suspicion, but I have no proof,” Garcia said. “Whoever kidnapped Niki covered their tracks well. Someone in Star Fleet would have had to have helped them, otherwise there is a real fundamental flaw in Jupiter’s Station security that was exploited.”
“How did you discover the Security issue?” McCoy said.
“The Path Finder is equipped with the best spy, surveillance, and computer hacking and espionage equipment ever assembled by the Federation and Klingon Empire,” Garcia admitted, noticing his right hand reflexively gripping his left wrist. He forced his hands to be still in his lap. “The Starburst Project wasn’t created primarily as a vehicle to deploy a weapon, but rather it was created to spy on our enemies. I’m using that technology to track down those responsible for the kidnappings. And I have a strong suspicion it’s someone in Star Fleet.”
“Do you know what you’re saying?!” McCoy snapped.
“I’m quite cognizant of what I’m saying,” Garcia snapped back. “And I’m not just being paranoid.”
McCoy got up and came around his desk and leaned against it in front of Garcia, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “What is going on?” McCoy said.
“There is so much going on, I don’t even know where to begin,” Garcia said. He sighed. “I’ll start with hard part. I’m currently in possession of technology, the IKV Path Finder, which is in violation of the peace treaty between the Federation and the Romulans governments. It’s not just the Starburst weapons, the modified Genesis devices which if word of their existence leaked out could start a war between us and the Klingons, but it’s the ship itself. It’s capable of cloaking. The surface material of the ship is comprised of metamaterials, which has a negative refractive index. The same way a current will go clear when it bubbles over a rock in a stream is the way light can be made to move across the surface of my ship, which makes it virtually impossible to see. But wait, it gets better. Because metamaterials doesn’t hide the mass of the ship, the ship has also been designed in such a way that it can camouflage itself with holographic matter. The whole ship is virtually a holographic emitter. I can make the ship appear to be anything I want. Another ship. A comet. President Lincoln in a chair floating in space. You name it, I can create it. Further, the ship is equipped with a traditional Klingon cloaking device, which can be used to hide the ship and the mass. Further, it is equipped with the prototype of a phasing cloak, which allows it to phase out of sync with normal matter, allowing us to pass through objects, or objects to pass through us, however you wish to look at it. And, you already know about the transwarp drive.”
McCoy didn’t say anything, so Garcia continued. “The transwarp is limited to jumps, but the range is sufficient that we can get almost anywhere in the Alpha quadrant in one jump, and tends to make the whole crew sea sick. The phasing cloak can only be sustained for a total of five seconds, and it knocks all the Klingons out cold. The only reason any of the prototype technologies work at all is because of the blending of Federation, Klingon, Kaladan and Kelvan computer systems. The latter, the Kelvan attributes of the ship, is why I was recruited by Admiral Pressman and Klingon Admiral Sheaar to be the Captain. My mission directives are to seek out enemies of the state, exposing and or eliminating all threats, whether they are foreign or domestic.”
“You’re going to have to blow the ship up,” McCoy said.
“That was my first impulse, believe me. Unfortunately, there are some problems with that,” Garcia said. “One, all that does is get rid of the evidence, doesn’t stop my bosses from starting over, or continuing with a team more compliant to their desires. Two, there are members of my crew,
