Act 3
Commander Log – Stardate 66158.97: Using the coordinates provided by Imperator Scholar Alarich, we have already discovered the Imperial Library. Now, we just have to discover how to get inside it.
Two crewmen stood side by side. One was a human male by the name of Chigger who was in Security and the other was an engineer by the last name of Woods. The engineer had a tri-corder out and was scanning, inputting new calculations. The other one was kneeling in front of a key combination lock, his fingers ready to move.
"Give 0-0-9-9-2-1-5 a try," Wood said to Chigger.
Chigger input the combination. They had been forced to use a portable power unit to generate power within the unit. It had taken an hour for the ancient device to get enough juice to even start waking. Another two for it be fully charged enough to start accepting key-inputs.
The lock gave a triple flash of dark red and the mechanical voice again intoned something in ancient Romulan. Unlike the more modern dialect, this one was a bastard-child of ancient Vulcan and Romulan.
"I guess that wasn't it," Chigger said, rubbing is forehead. "How many more combinations could this possible have?"
"Well," Wood said, beginning a new calculation, "That is number twelve. If indeed we can do the same digit multiple times in the code, that means we have 99,999,988 combinations left."
"You're almost Vulcan in your calculations," the Security officer said dryly.
"Let's hope not," James said, standing behind them. "Because it's already been five minutes to go through 12 different codes. That means it would take us over 333 thousand minutes."
"To be more precise," the singular Vulcan in their group piped up, standing with arms behind his back next to his partner, a Bolian female who was picking her nose, not at all caring that people were watching her. "It would be 5,555 hours, 33 minutes and 33 seconds to go through all the possible numbers. Or, if you would like, 231 days, 9 hours and 39 minutes."
"But we aren't going to be here that long," the Commander said aloud. "Think happy thoughts gentlemen and women. We only have seven days."
"I would-"
"As much as we would like to hear the precise amount of time, I think we'll pass for now, Mr. Ho'to," James smiled, interrupting the Vulcan. "Mr. Ho'to, would you take your scientific expertise and take Miss Stor with you and work on getting a map of every inch of the outer limits of the library as we can."
"Yes, sir," Ho'to said, and holding out his hand, pulled the female Bolian to her feet. He gave a disgusted look as he stuck her booger laden finger in her mouth and sucked it, swallowing it. With that, they both headed off.
The entire area in-front of the library was set in deep caves. They had been forced to hike down from a kilometer above, and yet even as they stood infront of the library, the walls dwarfed the entire team. The walls stood nearly fifteen meters in height and the door they were currently trying to open was easily five meters tall by six across.
"Mr. Honorius," he called to Alarich, who was reading something on a data padd. The older man looked up towards him as he made the few steps up to him. "Why did the Romulans have a coded entry to the Library? Was this installed before the First Romulan War? Or was this after the treaty?"
"Oh no," the Romulan shook his head. "Knowledge is one of the most guarded commodities of the Romulan Star Empire. Only one in ten thousand ever had been given the access code to enter the Library. It was one of the reasons the government felt so secure in its decision to abandon it after the treaty. Trelada was known by most people, but few actually knew the location of the Library. Most people wouldn't have been able to steal the data even if they wanted to."
A sound of grunting made James turn to see Commander Tano emerge, followed by a human female. She was covered in dirt, and the bottom of her pants were wet.
"What happened to you?" James asked, frowning at them.
"There is a massive lake that cuts below this layer of the cave," Tano responded, slapping the legs of her pants. A little bit of dirt rose from it, but not enough to make a difference. "It appears that a type of shark is in the water."
"Shark?" one of the lounging crewman asked, her eyes growing wide.
"They must be new," Alarich said. "There were no sharks on the planet when it was abandoned by the Empire."
"Sharks don't concern us," Antonius called out. He stood on the top rung of a ladder, having climbed as far up as he could on the library's walls. There appeared to be windows about ten meters above the ground. "Unless they bring us a nice, juicy steak."
"Is it possible that the Federation decided to transplant some animal species here, not knowing what else to do with it?" Alarich asked.
James shook his head. "Not Federation procedure to interject animals in planetary ecosystems that aren't native or compatible with the creatures." He turned his full attention to the Romulan who was starting on his way down from the ladder. "Did you manage to see anything?"
"Not real windows," he shook his head. He dropped the last two rungs to the ground and made a flourishing bow. "Their just decorative depressions made into the stonework and painted black."
"Paint?" the lounging crewman asked. "Me and Ensign Taggard scanned it earlier and we didn't come up with anything besides rock."
"When it comes to archeology," Alarich replied, pushing himself to his feet, "Paint actually doesn't come up on scanners. It's actually rather strange. How goes the code breaking?"
"Still no luck," Chigger replied.
"I have an idea," Alarich lifted his finger, stepping up to the panel, "If I may."
"Be my guest," Chigger responded, pushing himself to a standing position and stepping to the side.
"It's just a theory, but there were some cases where the current emperor's birthday was used to create the passcodes for Imperial buildings," the Romulan said. James stepped up to his side. "If I am correct, all we would need do is to input the date of the Emperor at that time. That would be the 22nd….no, the 23rd Emperor, the Emperor Janus Jupiter. Let's see….no, not that. Maybe….alright, not like that. Year, month, day and hour? Yes!"
With a triumphant shout, the keylock flashed green. The large doors began to rumble, slowly creaking open. The doors would falter and stop, hesitating even few millimeters as the ancient, rusted doors slid open. The sound of the doors opening brought all the Starfleet personnel running to watch the doors open.
Then, at long last, the door finally came fully open. In middle of the doorway appeared a hologram of an ancient Romulan. The hologram flickered in and out, disrupted to the point that it barely had any cohesion.
"Woods, can you boost the signal and clean it up?" James asked.
"No," the engineer shook his head. "It's just too weak."
"Maybe if the order had happened sooner maybe it would snapped to," Shran commented, coming up behind them.
James rolled his eyes. The hologram died out and with that, James led the way into the Library. As they entered, lights along the walls flickered, shuddering to come fully to power. As the lights started to illuminate more fully, it began to throw light onto a small vestibule that was round, but beyond it, they could see a massive opening which as the lights slowly worked their way on, revealed a massive chamber.
Stepping out into the main chamber, they were suddenly greeted with a many levels, running both up and down.
"Welcome, to the Great Imperial Library of the Romulan Star Empire!" Alarich said, grabbing a handrail and looking in awe at what lay before them.
"Commander Tano," James said, turning to the Korean officer. "I want you to take your teams and head down to the lowest level you can go. Start collecting data on the types of materials are down there. Catalogue which ones can be teleported and which ones would need to shipped via transports. Also which ones are too damaged to be recovered."
"Yes sir," Yoshi said, snapping a finger and bringing in the attention of her three teams. "I'd also like to start doing some tests to see just how old the manuscripts are."
"To get an idea of just how old the library is," James smiled.
"Exactly," Tano nodded.
"I like it," he put a hand on her shoulder. "The rest of the teams will head to the top most level and do the same thing. Councilor Ziz, all teams will report to you."
"If you say so," the Councilor said. "I am beginning to be fascinated by the air of excitement that seems to have spiked."
"Oh, history is exciting!" Alarich said, rubbing his hands together. There was a gleam in his eye as he spoke. He walked slowly, as if in a trance. "Great generals leading vast armies on the distant battlefields of the forgotten past."
"And best be forgotten," Antonius interjected.
"Great philosophers contemplating existence…."
"Pretty sure they were high at the time…."
"Great engines of industry discovered through sheer accident…"
"The only great engines I care about is the one that makes ship jump to warp and which make strong Romulan ale…."
"Debates that the very words fired the souls to create revolutions of both political and spiritual…."
"That or just give people a really good sleep."
"Are you quite finished?' Alarich snapped, turning to his younger colleague.
The younger Romulan thought for a second. He pressed his lips. Looked as if he were constipated than nodded.
"Yeah, I think I'm done," Antonius shrugged.
There was the sound of a chirping. James cleared his throat. Someone from the ship was trying to contact them. He tapped his commbadge.
"Commander Enviro here."
"Commander, how is everything going down there?"
"Just fine, Captain," he eagerly reported. "We just entered the Library. Took us a while to figure out how to get inside. But we are about to…."
"It'll give you a good start tomorrow."
He frowned, glancing at Tano. She also seemed confused and shrugged.
"Captain?"
"Commander, it's 1900 hours," the Captain informed him. "You don't think I was going to allow you to stay down there all night now, did you?"
He closed his eyes. He had completely lost track of the time. He heard Shran in the background making a low comment to some of his fellow crewmates who chuckled nervously. James threw a quick look over his shoulder and saw Shran trying to hide a smirk from him.
"Well," James began hopefully, "If you wouldn't mind. We just barely make access. If you wouldn't mind me keeping a few crew down here to keep working. They can camp down here."
"Your enthusiasm is noted, Commander. But rules must be followed."
James threw a look at Tano who threw her hands up defeatedly. He glanced over at Ziz whose eyes had focused on the Andorian. He didn't like abandoning the mission, especially when they had just made some headway. But there was nothing to it. He would just have to settle with the fact they found a lake with a shark in it.
"Of course," he agreed. "We'll be up soon."
"Mr. Thomas?"
"That's right."
"My name is T.J. Giles and this is my associate, Ezra Parker."
"Howd you do. This is Short Grub."
"We're out of the US Army Purchasing Office at Fort Clark and we understand that you have some horses to show us."
The John Wayne movie The Undefeated played in the background as steam rose from the pots that were boiling. Captain Traz glanced up from the boiling water, using a spatula to push down the long noodles. The door chime beeped and she peered through the billows of steam that made it near impossible to see the door.
"Come in," she called.
The door slid open and in stepped Commander Enviro. Through the steam she could tell he was wearing his uniform, and she could almost swear that it was a new one. She had hoped he would come in his dirty uniform, get a good glimpse at him filthy, but she was out of luck.
"Am I early?" he asked, hesitating and looking at the Captain as she moved to the pan, which had brown juice that was bubbling between the meatballs she had cooking.
"Not at all!" she said brightly. "Actually, I'm just a little behind. Spaghetti and meatballs. One of the first things I learned to cook with my foster family."
James shook his head, glancing sideways at the movie. "We'll cull your herd tomorrow as soon as our wranglers arrive from Bracketville." He shrugged as he took a seat at the glass table. He still hadn't acquired the taste for the old vids like she had.
"Isn't there some data that states that actual food prep actually is unhealthy?" he asked her.
"Don't believe a word of it!" she said. She lifted the pot and poured the hot water and noodles into a strainer. She was one of the few people on the Norway-Class vessel that had an actual sink with a faucet. Unlike the old Earth technology of pipes, the water went down to a recycler that scrubbed the water of all bacteria and returned it to a ten-gallon reservoir of water. "That's just one more attempt by our modern society to move us from our roots! Thinking of roots, how was your trip?"
"I can't wait to start tomorrow really mining into the Library to see what secrets lie within," he said, his face looking similar to that of a child about to get his first kitty. "I hope that we can transport most of the material directly here by transporter, but many may end up having to be manual shipped up here."
"So what is it about archeology that fascinates you so?" she asked. She now stirred the spaghetti and meatballs together in a spaghetti sauce made of real tomatoes, oregano and thyme spices. "It's a whole bunch of digging around in dirt. It's not like this ancient Earth movie where you can actually see what was happening. Most of it is guesswork."
"I have 3,000 for sale. Not 500."
"Well, surely you don't expect us to buy any old horse for the United States Army."
"Even this movie is just an interpretation of the past," James replied. "But when you are actually there, you are able to put your hand on the item. Feel the past in your hands. It doesn't matter if you don't understand the exact context of the item, it's the fact that you have it in your hands. I mean, take the Atlantis Project. They've finally found concrete evidence of where it is and what happened to it."
"But how does that help us in the now?" she asked, grabbing the handles of the pot and lifting it. James tried to stand but she shook her head. "I got it James, thanks."
"Every piece of the past gives us an opportunity to learn and prevent the catastrophes of the past by learning what was good and what was weak." He said, sitting back and his eyes taking on a glazed look. "To handle the items is similar to standing next to the original owner. To walk the battlefield you can almost imagine yourself in the middle of the army. To see the great men and women of the past coming together to create what the moments that led to us. Imagine the thoughts, arguments, well-wishes that each item overheard."
"They are inanimate objects" she replied, sitting down and spooning herself a nice helping of spaghetti. "They can't tell you anything."
"But a leaf is the greatest story of all," he held up a finger, his face eager. "It is a conduit by which every possible story that may have happened, had actually happened and what could have been is all there."
She smiled. "I think someone watched Doctor Who," she teased him. She laughed at the flush on his face. "So, how was the crew?"
"Ah," he said, his elation falling. "Is there a problem that I should be aware with Crewman Doog-ren?"
"I don't think so," she replied.
She looked at him, and seeing the look on his face, she reached out with her empathetic abilities. She could tell the consternation in her First Officer. Whatever it was that had happened, it clearly was bothering him.
"I have not heard of one complaint since he came on board three years ago," she said. "Is there an issue that I need to be aware of?"
"Well," he shrugged, scooping up food of his own. "He kept interrupting me during the briefing. He also kept making snide comments. I don't know if he thinks he's the class clown or not."
"Well, he's got a good wit about him," she replied. "But interrupting a senior officer? He finished third place in his class at the Starfleet Security Academy on Vulcan. I don't see why he should."
He leaned back, folding his arms as he did and thinking. Lillian didn't like this side of her First Officer. Troubled and indecisive.
"If there is an issue, you need to resolve it," she gently but firmly pointed out.
"Maybe he just needs to work whatever's in his system out," he shook his head. "I'll keep you appraised if there is anything more concrete."
