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“Are you familiar with the U.S.S. Kali?”
Admiral Shelby stared at Captain T’Lon through the display, sizing her up. Shelby had cut her hair short in the years since T’Lon had last seen her, and it was turning gray. It was a bit sad how humans aged so much faster than Vulcans, but such is life.
T’Lon stated, “The Kali is an Akira-class ship. Its patrol route partially overlaps with that of the Churchill. Yonas Jabbar is the captain.”
Shelby nodded and continued, “The Kali was studying a coherent energy cloud near Theta Draconis on the possibility that it represented a new kind of life. We received a distress call from the Kali which lasted exactly six seconds. Since then, we haven’t been able to re-establish contact.”
T’Lon realized that her ship, the U.S.S. Churchill, was about to be sent to investigate.
“The Kali,” the Admiral continued, “is now running subspace silent on a vector for Earth at warp nine point two.”
“That’s unsettling,” T’Lon responded.
“Yes, it is. Your ship and the Thunberg are fast and in range. You will proceed at maximum warp, intercept the Kali, and investigate. I’m sending you all the details I have with the official orders.”
“Understood,” T’Lon said.
Shelby paused, again peering analytically at T’Lon through subspace. T’Lon gazed back, wondering if the recent problems with her command of the Churchill were perhaps inspiring some doubt in the Admiral.
Then Shelby added, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this one. Call it intuition. An Akira class ship packs at lot of fire power. Use caution, Captain T’Lon.”
“I understand, Admiral Shelby.”
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As the Churchill pulled in close to the Kali, matching its speed, T’Lon was reminded how beautifully engineered the Akira-class cruisers were—like a work of art. The Kali also outgunned her little scout ship by ten to one.
Her first officer, Danise Simonson, asked her, “Do we wait for the Thunberg to arrive?”
“No,” T’Lon replied. “We have the entrant prefix code. Let’s access the Kali’s internal sensors and see what we can find out.”
Simonson’s summary was chilling: only two hundred life signs out of a crew of five hundred. Many lifeless bodies distributed throughout the ship. Those still alive seemed engaged in normal activities, oblivious to the dead around them. The bridge appeared to be abandoned, apart from corpses.
They located the captain via his comm badge; he was deceased. They then located the first officer of the Kali in one of the mess halls. Simonson chimed his comm badge, and he answered in a chattering, confused voice, repeating words and phrases, not making sense.
T’Lon tried hard to get through to him: “Commander Szekely, this is Captain Sovak T’Lon of the Federation scout ship Churchill. Can you understand me? Commander Szekely…can you understand me?”
Again they heard the nonsensical chattering.
“I…I want to…to…cold…cold and I…I…the…the….”
T’Lon and Simonson exchanged troubled glances.
“It’s not hypoxia,” said Simonson, studying the environmental data from the other ship. “Temperature and oxygen levels are good. Hold on…the mess hall has a video sensor.”
Szekely was sitting alone at a table, eating from a tray of food, staring straight ahead and not blinking. He ate using his fingers instead of utensils. Strikingly, bodies littered the floor around him, lying dead where they fell.
Again, Simonson and T’Lon locked eyes. Neither had seen anything like this before. Doctor Li hurried onto the bridge and peered over Simonson’s shoulder. The rest of the bridge crew were listening from their stations.
“Can you tell me your name and rank?” T’Lon demanded of Szekely over the comm.
Szekely said, “I have to…to…the…the…to have to…the…the….”
Li, examining the scattered life signs on Simonson’s panel, pointed to a main corridor. There, the video sensor revealed crew members shuffling past one another insensibly, with unblinking eyes. One wore underwear. Another’s face was bruised and bloody, but she seemed unaware.
“Christ…,” Simonson whispered, a chill in her voice.
T’Lon, using the entrant code, activated the Kali’s public address channel and stated, “All hands, report to your stations.”
For a second, the figures on the display stopped and looked about, dazed, but soon continued their meandering and oblivious gait.
“They’re unconscious,” Li said. “Sleepwalking, sleep-talking, sleep-eating. Something has shut off their consciousness.”
Drawing an uneasy breath, T’Lon considered this and asked Li, “Is this related to the cloud of coherent energy they were studying?”
The doctor was confounded. He shook his head and said, “Perhaps? I don’t know.”
“Recommendations?” T’Lon asked her crew.
Simonson suggested, “Pull the recent logs and files. See what the data tells us. Once the Thunberg arrives, we’ll coordinate.”
“Do it,” agreed T’Lon.
Li said, “I can beam over to the Kali in an environmental suit to take some neural scans of both living and dead crew members. That way we limit the risk of contagion, in case there is a pathogen involved.”
T’Lon turned to C’Mal, who supervised away missions involving tactical crew, and said, “Send two support crew with Li in environmental suits. Both armed, weapons set to stun.”
“Understood,” C’Mal replied.
T’Lon turned to Endoye, the ensign who was acting chief engineer. “Take the Kali sub-light, then lock out all navigation and engineering controls on that ship. Move panel access to Auxiliary Control and remotely lock the door if you have to.”
“Aye, Captain,” he replied.
T’Lon switched the display back to the Kali’s first officer, still sitting and eating in the mess hall, surrounded by corpses.
“Let’s see what we can do to help these poor people,” she said.
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“Whether alive or dead, each brain I scanned contained branching paths of necrotic tissue. The damage occurred on at least a cellular level, perhaps on a molecular level. That is the root cause of the disorder of consciousness we see in the crew.”
Li had returned from the Kali and was talking through his findings in the briefing room.
“So definitely no pathogen,” began Simonson, “and no evidence of burns or radiation, as well as no abnormal EM fields on the sensor logs? What could hit everyone on the ship simultaneously but not show up on the sensors?”
T’Lon proposed, “Perhaps some sort of targeted, induced mechanical energy?”
Simonson considered this. “Phonons? Ship’s sensors aren’t really calibrated to detect phonons as such on a quantum level.”
“What about the crew?” asked T’Lon. “What can be done for them?”
The doctor wore a defeated expression. He said, “I tried every trick I could think of to restore consciousness. Of course, each crew member will have to be scanned individually, but I’m not optimistic those affected will ever be functional people again.”
C’Mal comm’d from the bridge: “The U.S.S. Thunberg has arrived. Captain Saeli is asking permission to beam medical officer Lt. Commander Gorath and science officer Lieutenant Laqat aboard the Churchill to consult.”
T’Lon began, “Permission gra—,” when the ship jolted and rolled, tossing all three from their chairs. The lights failed for a second, then came back up as the red alert sounded.
“The Kali just warped away,” C’Mal reported over the comm. “Before it left it hit us with its port phaser banks. Parts of deck three decompressed. No injuries reported.”
As T’Lon was helping Doctor Li stand, she noticed the Thunberg, which was visible through the starboard windows. One nacelle was completely gone, a glittering cloud of purplish plasma in its place.
She slapped her comm badge.
“T’Lon to Captain Saeli, what is your status?”
The voice that answered was almost drowned by static despite the proximity of the sending ship: “Reactor offline. Venting plasma. Could be worse, but we’re dead in the water.”
“Captain Saeli,” T’Lon responded, “we are able to pursue the Kali, but I will stay to render assistance if needed.”
“No, we’ve got it,” the captain of the Thunberg replied. “Go.”
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With the Churchill in pursuit of the Kali, and the Kali again warping toward Earth, T’Lon contacted Admiral Shelby for orders. Shelby’s role in defeating the Gray at Deep Space 12 was legendary. T’Lon hoped to draw upon her experience to deal with the current bizarre situation.
T’Lon explained, “The crew of the Kali should have been completely locked out. And our medical officer doesn’t believe they were capable of executing any kind of attack, even if they had access. I can’t understand what happened.”
Shelby remained silent for a moment, then said, “According to what you’ve told me, the brain of every crew member was affected. But…there is another brain aboard the Kali that you didn’t consider.”
T’Lon gasped in realization. “The central computer? It didn’t occur to me to run a diagnostic.”
Shelby nodded. “Now let’s consider what we’re up against. An Akira-class ship with a god-awful amount of firepower is acting autonomously, has fired upon two Federation ships, and is on an unambiguous heading toward Earth. Captain T’Lon, how many deaths would result if a Federation heavy cruiser were used as a matter-antimatter bomb.”
“Potentially, millions,” T’Lon replied.
“Potentially tens of millions,” Shelby corrected. “These are the kinds of things that keep people like me up at night. Now, I’m assembling a task force to intercept the Kali in Deneb Sector, but my hope is that it doesn’t get that far. That hope rests on your shoulders, T’Lon. Do you understand?”
“What—what about the crew of the Kali?” T’Lon asked.
“Stopping the Kali is your priority, Captain. Destroy the Kali if necessary.” Shelby’s words left no room for uncertainty.
“I understand,” T’Lon replied.
Shelby gazed at T’Lon for a moment with what seemed to be pity before she added, “Good luck,” and ended the transmission.
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As the Churchill caught up with the Kali, T’Lon beamed over, taking C’Mal with her for tactical support. It was logical: T’Lon had just come off a job managing a subspace relay, which was very similar to the Kali’s computer core. She had the expertise to shut down the ship’s main computer so that the damaged crew members might receive treatment, if there even was a treatment.
The shields of the errant ship went up just after they beamed aboard. The main computer was learning how to control the ship, as well as how to block the prefix code’s override power. The Churchill pulled back to follow the Kali at a safe distance.
Thankfully, the corridor outside the computer room was deserted. C’Mal winced and held one of her finely articulated paws before her nose.
“Sorry,” she said. “Ferasain sense of smell. I’m smelling dead humans.”
C’Mal’s fiery gold eyes fixed on T’Lon, who seemed weak and confused. She reached out and steadied the Vulcan, asking, “Hey, what’s wrong?”
T’Lon shook her head in dismay. She was shaking and felt nauseated.
“I’ve never seen you afraid before…,” C’Mal said.
“Fear?” T’Lon said, astounded. “Is that what this is?”
T’Lon entered the computer room; C’Mal followed and locked the door behind them.
Sitting down and activating a control console, T’Lon explained, “Daystrom computer cores function like hemispheres in the human brain.” She began navigating panel menus as she spoke. “Damage is bypassed, code is repurposed and even rewritten on the fly when needed. Just like a brain restructuring itself after a stroke.” She began killing all the running processes that would prevent a fast shutdown of the computer core. “The Kali…is brain damaged. And it’s very, very afraid.”
The computer room door beeped, unlocked, and slid open, revealing the empty hallway outside.
“Oh shit,” lamented C’Mal. Filled with dread, she stood defensively, phaser rifle in hand.
T’Lon, still shutting down ship’s processes, reminded her, “On stun.”
C’Mal groaned unhappily in acknowledgment.
The Kali went to red alert, and the overhead lights began pulsing and strobing in red and white streams. C’Mal began to crouch, looking more like a cat than T’Lon had ever seen. Her fine, long auburn hair was raised, and her mouth partially open.
T’Lon heard footfalls in the corridor…many feet.
“Hurry,” urged C’Mal.
Kali crew members, looking provoked and angry, began to flood in. C’Mal fired her phaser three times before exclaiming, “Stun isn’t working!”
T’Lon opened a section of access plating on the computer core. She scrambled into the crawlspace, pulled C’Mal’s lithe form in behind her, then closed the plating. A continuous, powerful column of hot air roared upward past them, carrying away the heat from the processor units.
Outside, the fomentation in the computer center quieted.
C’Mal switched on the directional beam of her rifle, lighting up the confined space in a focused blue-white ray. T’Lon put a finger to her lips, indicating quiet.
“They’re not forming memories,” the Vulcan whispered. “Out of sight, out of mind.”
“Stun setting doesn’t work on them,” C’Mal hissed.
“The Kali crew must be missing the neural pathways that register pain as well,” T’Lon hypothesized. “The ship has learned to manipulate them. It’s using them just like antibodies.”
“So we’re the germs now?” asked C’Mal sarcastically.
T’Lon placed her hands flat on the banks of volatile memory surrounding them.
“Vulcans are telepathic. I can feel what the Kali is feeling. It’s radiating from this brain that’s all around us. And…it’s in a dreamlike, paranoid state. It’s psychotic and terrified. C’Mal, I think this may be a ‘first contact’ situation.”
“Screw that,” C’Mal growled, “it’s just a malfunctioning computer.”
“Remember V’Ger?” argued T’Lon.
“V’Ger wanted to sterilize Earth,” the Ferasain countered dryly. “Face it, T’Lon, we’re in over our heads. Let’s just find the nearest transporter and beam back to the Churchill so the task force can blow this ship to bits.”
A series of loud pops sounded and sparks fell upon the two Starfleet officers. C’Mal pointed her directional light at the shorted-out bank of equipment. T’Lon peered upward and scowled.
“Heisenberg compensators,” she said, no longer bothering to whisper. “They have one purpose, to make the transporters work.”
“It’s listening to us!” realized C’Mal. “What if we take a shuttlecraft?”
“We’ll never make it to the other end of the ship. No, we use the life pods to escape. The life pods are isolated from the ship, so they should be safe. We can use the inter-deck access shafts to get to them.”
T’Lon’s comm badge chimed; it was Simonson, now in command of the Churchill.
“Be careful what you say, Commander,” warned T’Lon over the comm.
“I understand,” she replied. “We’re entering Deneb Sector. There isn’t much time left. Can you lower the Kali’s shields?”
“We’re—”
T’Lon did not get to finish. Her comm badge began to smoke and melt, as did C’Mal’s. In addition, their phasers were now inoperable.
“It’s learning fast,” cried C’Mal.
Deneb Sector was where the assembled fleet awaited the Kali with the intention of destroying it; time was running out. The two women scrambled down into the central shaft of the processor complex.
T’Lon had studied the plans of the Kali before the mission. In her mind, she had a path mapped out to the escape pods near the bottom of the primary hull. They pressed on through vertical access shafts and corridors filled with decaying bodies, trying to avoid anything like a turbolift that would put them at the mercy of the intelligence now trying to control their fate.
“My hope,” said T’Lon, “is that the fleet targets the power transfer points of the Kali, knocking it out of warp, giving us a chance to escape in the life pods.”
The unspoken part of the plan was the hope that the Kali was unable at that point to use the escaping life pods for target practice.
C’Mal stopped T’Lon, grabbing her arm, and placed a paw on her chest, directly over her heart.
“We probably have only seconds to get to the pods,” objected T’Lon.
“No, listen,” began C’Mal, “I want you to know this…watching you fight the good fight over this past year…has given me the strongest faith of my life.”
T’Lon wasn’t sure how to respond.
She placed a hand on the side of her tactical officer’s sleek felinid face and stated, “We’re going to make it.” C’Mal frowned and slowly shook her head. T’Lon reiterated with even more certainty, “We are going to make it.”
Emerging together onto the lowest deck of the primary hull, they found it pulsing with red and white light. They ran toward the nearest of the emergency pods and opened the hatch, but Kali crew members were already grabbing at them violently. One restrained T’Lon by the arms and looked at her intently, as if he had the most urgent and important thing to tell her, but couldn’t express it. She pushed him away and saw C’Mal being dragged down the corridor by several others. C’Mal popped into the air, landed on her feet, and glanced back at T’Lon, her claws, extended and exquisitely sharp, catching the light.
T’Lon grunted as she kicked away the grasping hands and the angry faces that kept intruding into the life pod. She managed to close and lock the hatch, then noticed, through the bottom portal, a neighboring life pod sprint away.
C’Mal, she thought. She made it.
The Kali was rocked by multiple blasts, and T’Lon was thrown repeatedly against the frame of the pod. Dazed, she observed phaser fire and torpedo trails through the bottom portal. The structure of the Kali began to shake and rattle; she heard metal bending and bulkheads wrenching. Pressing the life pod's ‘Away’ button only produced a failure message. The hatch wouldn’t open back up. She was trapped.
Damn, she realized, this is it.
Peering through the bottom portal, she saw plasma clouds and glowing shards of hull floating away.
At least C’Mal made it.
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Simonson navigated the maze that was Starfleet Medical. How is it that a square building did not contain a single straight corridor?
She found Sovak T’Lon on a floor near the top. San Francisco Bay glimmered through the expansive windows. Positioned before the windows was a row of involved patients. T’Lon was almost completely hidden within a tangle of devices, displays, and conduits. Simonson recognized a bit of her orange hair. The rest was masked by technology.
Not even a hand to hold.
She began to cry.
“Commander?”
C’Mal appeared, wearing civilian clothes and black-rimmed glasses on her face.
“I came by to see Sovak,” Simonson said, wiping her eyes.
“There’s not much to see. They’re regenerating her skeleton. She’ll be unconscious for another week.”
C’Mal set down her purse next to a large, open day bag and a stack of books. Simonson realized the Lieutenant had been staying this whole time by T’Lon’s side.
“When is she…when will she be back on her feet?” asked Simonson.
“The doctor said recovery won’t take less than a year,” said C’Mal. “The captain has no home, and no family. I’m taking her with me to Ferasa. I’ve already applied for a two year sabbatical. I’m going to take care of her.”
“I just learned that the Churchill is being scrapped,” Simonson stated grimly. “Everyone’s being reassigned. She won’t have a ship to come back to.”
C’Mal was gentle, but equally grim. “The doctor told me that when officers go through this much trauma, they’re never returned to active duty. Her days as a Starfleet captain are over.”
“But you’re staying beside her?” Simonson pressed.
“I love her,” C’Mal confessed.
“I have to go,” Simonson said, her eyes filling with tears. C’Mal approached and hugged her tightly and confidently.
“See ya, Danise,” C’Mal said.
Danise Simonson retreated quickly through the ward, out into the hall, past the nurses station and down into the stairwell. And there, she sat on the stairs and cried. For her ship, for her crew, but, especially, for her captain.