Star Trek: Absolution
Chapter III: Vanishing Act
King Apella the 2nd made his way slowly down a large flight of stairs and into a private courtyard located near the rear wall of his castle. It was late evening and the overhead sun was just beginning its descent toward the western horizon. A chill breeze was in the air and would no doubt become gradually stronger as the evening moved toward twilight. Shivering from a sudden gust of wind, the King tightened his robe around him.
His beautiful wife Maliya followed curiously behind him with her curly blonde tresses cascading around her face and shoulders. She was still a vision of loveliness after forty seasons, and – watching the sunlight on her face and the light in her blue eyes – he carefully stroked his long graying beard and grumbled something about time and his inability even as King to slow it down. He himself had seen well over sixty seasons, although he was still a very strong and powerfully built man.
"Did General Thadren say what this was about?" he asked his Queen as they reached the bottom of the stairway. He turned and offered a hand to Maliya and gallantly assisted her down to ground level. She pulled her own coat tighter as she shook her head negatively in reply.
"No," she said with an expression as curious as his. "All his messenger told me was that our soldiers have found something vitally important to Vandahar's future."
"It had better be important," said the King with some bluster in his voice. "I still had half a bottle of wine to finish before taking my leave of this day."
They both moved out into the courtyard and recognized three people standing closely in a small group near the outer wall. General Thadren, commander of Vandahar's armed forces was speaking quietly to Captain Rendu. Directly next to the two of them stood Sepenon, the King's trusted Kanutu spiritual advisor.
Thadren was a bull of a man, powerful and strong. Like his King, he too had dark graying hair and was getting on in years. But he still had plans to serve as General of Vandahar's armed forces for many seasons to come. He was a patriot, and Apella held little doubt that his military commander would gladly die for his people if his service in the armed forces required it.
Rendu was shorter, younger and not nearly as well muscled. Like Thadren, he wore a military uniform but had the look of a man who enjoyed paperwork more so than a physical fight. He too had proven to be very reliable, as well as a leader and trusted soldier.
By contrast, Sepenon was tall and thin and wore clothing colored mostly in black and shades of purple. He was quite old and rumored to be nearing 80 seasons, but to look at him one could never guess it. Although his hair was gray, Sepenon's face was nearly free of wrinkles – something of a mystery for someone his age. The King's son Yori regularly asked the wizard for his secret, and each time Sepenon would tell the young prince to pay attention to the special herbs and spices he added to the King's dishes. Many of them had health-enhancing qualities, he would say – and some of them held a little magic as well.
"I heard that you have some news for me this evening General Thadren," said the King cautously as he and Maliya joined the group. His eyes darted down to the small black handgun that Thadren held, noting that it was unlike anything he had seen before. The metal was very sleek and strange – his first impression was that it looked extremely difficult to manufacture. Along the top of the weapon were several bright green lights glittering oddly as he continued to stare at it in wonder.
"Where did you get that?" Maliya asked, also intrigued.
"Some of the soldiers stationed southwest of the city heard a loud noise in the sky early this morning," Thadren replied. He held the device up so both King and Queen could examine it more closely, then nodded at Rendu. "The Captain took a company of soldiers out to investigate and saw a huge mechanical flying object fall from the sky. They found a crash site where this object landed along with a strange woman who was wearing some sort of military uniform."
"She was injured and found by a small boy from our city," said Rendu. "He slipped through our watch posts somehow and claimed to be out hunting."
"Was he truly out hunting?" Sepenon asked suspiciously. "Or did he slip through your guards in order to meet with this woman?"
"I'm reasonably certain that the encounter was an accident," Rendu replied reassuringly. "The object did not appear as though it planned to land where it did – its remains are still laying out there in several large pieces. When we arrived on the scene the boy was giving the woman water and tending to her injuries."
"A machine that flies through the air," Apella said with wonder. "Where is the boy now?"
"He and the woman have both been detained for questioning," stated the Captain. "I had them locked up in the castle prison, figuring that Thadren would want to interrogate them both personally. He will no doubt want to verify the boy's story and also find out who this woman is and where she came from."
"What is that?" Maliya asked, pointing to the handgun held by Thadren. She had been staring at its unique design and winking lights curiously ever since they arrived and could no longer resist asking. "It appears to be powered by electricity."
"I have truly never seen its like," Sepenon said bluntly. "It is a definite threat to us, particularly if there are more like them." His expression clouded with concern. "If Alucarn has begun manufacturing these, we are all in extreme danger."
"Captain Rendu found this in the wreckage of the flying machine," General Thadren said. "It is a hand weapon more powerful than anything I have ever seen before – even more powerful than our largest cannons."
"Really…" Apella said with deepening interest. "How powerful?"
"I've arranged a demonstration for you," said the General warily. He gestured toward the far side of the courtyard where a series of stone blocks had been hastily stacked. They were very similar to the type of stone that had been carefully excavated and used to construct both the castle and city walls. There were three of them, each of which was roughly one meter long, half a meter wide, and one meter tall.
Thadren pointed the weapon at the stack of stone blocks and fired a short burst from the handgun. A flash of green energy traveled instantly from the weapon to its target, splitting the stone block on top of the stack neatly in two. Smoke rose from the damaged stone and one half of it fell to the ground with a loud crunching nose. The General fired the weapon again, this time keeping a sustained burst of energy focused on the second half of the damaged block that still rested on top of the other two.
"Mordra's shade preserve us," Apella gasped as they watched the remnants of the top stone quickly melt into white-hot liquid rock. The molten ore flowed slowly down the sides of the other two stones and burned its way into the grassy-covered ground below, sizzling fiercely as it instantly began to cool. The King felt Maliya's hand grasp his tightly and they both turned away from the stones to face their General in shock.
"The weapon has ten settings," said Thadren informatively as he made some adjustments to the handgun. "That was setting four… this is number six." Again he pointed the weapon at the remaining two blocks and this time fired a three second burst. Both remaining stones glowed bright green and then vanished, leaving a smoking, burning smear pattern in the green grass upon which they had previously rested.
"We are unwilling to test the weapon at its higher settings while still inside the city," pointed out Rendu. "The damage this weapon could do…"
"Just one of these weapons could destroy all of Vandahar," Sepenon snarled angrily. "And we don't know just how many more of them are out there!"
"Or if there are more flying machines," Maliya added.
"That weapon must remain in your care General Thadren," King Apella ordered. "I want you to personally lock it in one of the castle vaults and post armed guards around it at all times. It must not, under any circumstances, leave this city. And this information must be kept classified… Alucarn has spies everywhere. No one must know about this until we can determine whether this morning's occurrences precede a military invasion of some sort against our nation."
"No one but the five of us know about the weapon," commented Rendu cautiously. "But the crashed object is another matter. We left armed guards out there and the rest of my squadron returned with me. Many of them were witnesses to the event, and trying to keep everyone from talking about the advanced flying machine that fell from the sky is proving to be impossible."
"The gates to the city opened after sunrise as usual," said Sepenon. "Since some of our guards have already started rumors, many of our city residents have been tempted to journey to the southwest and view this object for themselves." He shook his head in disgust. "Rendu's guards have been chasing them away with the threat of imprisonment, but more have continued to try and go see this flying machine throughout the entire afternoon."
"We wanted to make certain that we knew how much of a threat the object and this weapon are to Vandahar before we approached you, your Majesty," Thadren said respectfully.
"Of course, of course…" Apella said, waving a hand casually to dismiss any concerns they might have about disapproval from their leader. A thought occurred to him. "We have the woman who flew it in custody – what about the object itself? Could we possibly bring it here and hide it somewhere on the castle grounds?"
"The object is huge, your Majesty," Thadren commented. "We have assembled a team of horses and wagons and have plans to move it, but I am convinced that we will have to break it into smaller parts first." He held up the handgun for emphasis. "You can see how small and sophisticated this device is – its construction is quite complex. My fear is that once we disassemble the flying machine we will be unable to get it working again once we do store it in a safer location."
"I don't see that we have any choice," said Sepenon cautiously. "We can't leave it out there. As soon as this morning's reports are verified, everyone in the surrounding territory will be making the journey to see this thing."
"Use the cover of night," King Apella decided. "Once the daylight is gone, General, please move your soldiers and horses out. Do whatever is necessary to bring the flying machine into the castle and conceal it from public view." He pointed at the hand weapon. "And lock that thing up until we can assign our mechanical specialists to figure out how it works."
"It will be done as you ask, my King," promised Thadren.
The Yellowjacket dropped out of warp speed and decelerated to .5c. Moving at half the speed of light, the sophisticated runabout continued its speedy approach into the Stadian system. On the forward viewscreen, Lieutenant Commander Data watched the bright pinpoint that was Stadia's sun grow brighter with each passing second. His fingers rapidly typed in a series of commands and the ship adjusted course to rendezvous with the planet on the far side of the star.
"Computer," he said abruptly, breaking the silence in the ship's cockpit. "Please initiate a detailed scan of this star system. Report immediately any sign of cloaked Romulan ships."
"Acknowledged," the ship's computer replied.
As far as Starfleet runabouts were concerned, the Yellowjacket was the largest and most advanced vessel built short of a first class scout ship. Its computer systems were the latest in Federation technology – designed with all the sensor and research equipment available to a deep space probe.
The normal gold coloring had been removed from Data's skin and he was also wearing contact lenses changing his eye color to brown. Sitting in the pilot's seat dressed in simple civilian clothing he looked like a typical, normal humanoid. No one who had not officially met him would ever guess that he was a highly complex positronic-based android. He checked the time chronometer and noted that nearly twelve hours had passed since the Romulan ship had been tracked to and confirmed entering Stadia's atmosphere.
He had been fully briefed on the situation by Captain Kim before leaving the Rhode Island. He had also listened to a replay of the recorded conference meeting between the Kim, Picard, Riker and Janeway during the Yellowjacket's warp 9.975 high speed journey to Stadia. Captain Kim had uploaded the relevant computer files into the runabout's computer, and Data had promptly downloaded Admiral Janeway's specific mission objectives into his neural net so that he could begin evaluating the various contingencies that would be needed depending on what he found when the Yellowjacket achieved planetary orbit.
"Computer, display the results," he ordered, watching the information flick quickly across one of the runabout's screens. "Are there any additional Romulan vessels currently hiding in Federation space?"
"Results are negative at this time," said the computer. "Tachyon detection grid in this sector remains fully intact. Neutrino emissions are negative. Starbase outposts 91 and 92 report no further Romulan activity detected near the Federation and Klingon Neutral Zones."
"Excellent," Data said as his ship settled gently into orbit above Stadia. "Display the projected impact point of the renegade Romulan shuttle on screen."
He watched carefully as an outline of the planet's primary continent appeared. The computer automatically super-imposed the borderlines that defined Vandahar and Alucarn on top of the land mass. He noticed that Alucarn was quite large by comparison, though it was clear from the territories surrounding the captital city that Vandahar was also a major power on the planet. The flight path of the Romulan shuttle began in the upper atmosphere out over the western ocean and ended with an impact point in the largely unpopulated region just to the southwest of Vandahar.
"Engine containment pod detected to starboard," said the computer suddenly.
Data verified the information with more than a little satisfaction. Whoever had piloted the Romulan ship was not foolish. He had taken the time to eject the shuttle's engine core upon realizing that a normal, safe landing on the planet's surface had become impossible. If this task had not been completed, the shuttle crash could potentially have generated a cataclysmic explosion on the planet's surface.
"How far is the crash site from the outer edges of Vandahar city?" he asked.
"Seven point three kilometers."
"Scan a one hundred kilometer radius surrounding the crash site," was Data's next instruction. "Identify and report all Romulan bio signs." There was a momentary pause as the computer worked quickly to comply.
"Results negative," was the unexpected response.
"Elaborate please," he requested.
"There are no Romulan life signs outside of the city of Vandahar within the perimeter specified. The city itself is populated by at least thirty thousand inhabitants. Life signs within the city limits are therefore indeterminate without a closer survey of the surface."
"Can you detect the power source from any Romulan disruptors or other advanced electronic equipment within the search area?"
"There is one disruptor signature inside the city of Vandahar."
So… if someone had survived the crash then whoever it was had already been captured and most likely taken inside the city walls. This complicated matters slightly, but Data still found no immediate cause for concern.
"Where is the disruptor located?"
"Currently it is lying in an underground room near a sparsely populated area of the castle grounds situated in the center of the city."
"Is the disruptor currently within visual range of any of the life signs?"
"Negative, although there are two life signs standing outside the room in a nearby corridor," reported the computer.
Data made his first command decision of the mission. "Lock the transporter onto the disruptor signature coordinates and beam the weapon aboard." He watched a small cloth sack tightly tied with a length of twine materialize on the platform behind him and quickly retrieved it, removing the hand gun and stashing the device in a nearby weapons locker. He returned to the cockpit quite satisfied with his progress.
"Scan the crash site again. Is the Romulan ship still there?"
"Affirmative."
"Report on humanoid life signs within a four kilometer radius surrounding the crash site."
"There are five humanoid life signs in the immediate vicinity of the Romulan ship. Twenty additional life signs are located half a kilometer to the northeast. They are moving slowly in a southwesterly direction toward the vessel."
Data's next command decision was instantaneous. "Computer, set the ship's phasers to level 1. Adjust the beam intensity to one percent."
"Phasers set."
"Use a wide disbursement field to fire the phasers and stun all twenty-five life signs."
"Completed."
"Are any of the life signs in the target area still conscious?"
"Negative."
"What is the projected time until consciousness returns to the stunned individuals?"
"Twenty one point five minutes."
Data adjusted the Yellowjacket's course, taking the runabout into the planet's atmosphere in a descent course designed to bring him directly above the crash site. "Computer, please identify and list all unpopulated regions within a one hundred kilometer radius surrounding the Romulan vessel." Once on the surface, he knew that he would have to work quickly.
While the Yellowjacket hovered lazily above the Romulan ship, Data surveyed the crash site. One of the shuttle's nacelles had broken off and lay cracked and broken behind the vessel. The rest of the ship had struck the surface of the planet hard and rebounded into a wall of trees before coming to an abrupt stop against them. Additional debris was scattered over the entire area in a variety of sizes varying from microscopic to quite large.
Data quickly beamed to the surface and carried the five unconscious soldiers over the crest of the nearest hilltop and out of visual range of his activity. He moved the first four of them two at a time, noting that the entire process took six minutes to complete.
Next the Enterprise's second officer tapped the Comm-badge on his chest and ordered the computer to beam him back aboard the runabout. Activating the Yellowjacket's tractor beam, he swiftly moved the Romulan shuttle well clear of the crash area and gently set it down in the soft grass of a nearby glade. He used his ship's sensors to examine the crash site more closely and identified the outer radius of the debris field.
He manually set the runabout's phasers to a low-power setting and fired them in a wide burst, gradually adjusting their intensity upward. All of the smaller debris vaporized along with the grassy surface of the topsoil, and upon completion of the task he noted that the black, smoking cylinder of the broken nacelle was the only thing left. Adjusting one of the phaser banks to a higher setting, he fired a narrow beam at the blackened nacelle and vaporized it as well. Making one last review of the crash site, he was quite satisfied that it now appeared as though there had been a large prairie fire in the area – nothing more, nothing less.
Again Commander Data beamed down to the planet's surface, the purpose of his latest visit being to return each of the soldiers to their original location. His photographic computer memory allowed him to return each of them exactly where they had fallen from the stun blast. He also took a moment to arrange all five bodies in the same positions that he had initially found them. His internal chronometer told him that fifteen point four minutes had elapsed since he had stunned the men into unconsciousness.
Data tapped his Comm-badge. "Computer, please beam me aboard," he requested, promptly vanishing in a swirl of sparkling blue energy. Once more he sat down in the Yellowjacket's forward cockpit and applied additional power to the ship's maneuvering thrusters. Reactivating the tractor beam, he used its energy to lift the Romulan shuttle back into the air and fired the ship's thrusters. Both ships began to move away in a westerly direction and quickly vanished into the red and orange-hued clouds drifting across the day's setting sun.
Balii opened his eyes and saw puffy clouds floating in the sky above – he realized with a sudden burst of fear that he was laying flat on his back. The distinctive odor of smoldering grass was everywhere and he quickly sat up and glanced around, completely astonished. The soldier from Vandahar shook his head to clear the sleepy haze from his eyes as he rose to his feet, noticing that there was absolutely no trace of the flying machine that they had stayed behind at Rendu's order to safeguard.
Instead, he found himself standing in a circular patch of blackened prairie grass approximately thirty meters in diameter. The trees against which the unknown object had once rested were burned completely away, with small flames continuing to lick casually at the neighboring trees that remained in the background.
"May Mordra preserve us all," he said in utter disbelief, noting that the rest of his men were slowly rising to their feet – they too were groggy and disoriented. Whatever unseen force that disabled him had affected them also. Stepping forward, he picked up his rifle before carefully scanning the sky and surrounding territory. Nothing out of the ordinary was visible… whatever it was that they had been standing careful watch over for the past twelve and a half hours had completely disappeared.
"What happened?" he heard one of his fellow soldiers ask.
"I don't know," Balii snapped angrily at the man. "Be on your guard, soldier. Whoever attacked us may still be in the area."
"Attacked us? What are you talking about?"
"Do you think that it is an accident we all fell unconscious at the exact same time?" wondered Balii. "It is some form of sorcery, I tell you. Someone has taken our prize from us."
Voices reached their ears, and the soldiers turned to see a crowd of people walking toward them from a nearby hilltop. Most were walking awkwardly, and some of them were whispering excitedly to each other. The group was at least twenty or so, causing Balii to move toward them as they continued to approach his small band of soldiers.
"We heard that an object fell from the sky this morning," one of them said boldly. "We have come to look upon it and see it for ourselves."
Balii felt a surge of hostility rise within him. He and his men had been confronting and turning people away all day long… this was the first time a group of them had actually made it over the hilltop before he could chase them back to their homes. Realizing that he could not change the present situation, he decided to take advantage of it.
"You fools," he declared fiercely. "Look around you. There isn't any mysterious object from the sky – someone is obviously playing a practical joke on you. We are investigating the cause of a fire that blazed out of control earlier today, and that is all."
"My brother is one of your soldiers and has seen it!" one of the civilians insisted. "Trailing smoke and fire it was as it traveled across the early morning sky. Some say it was Mordra herself, returning as was foretold to snatch all evil souls from this world and drag them screaming into the next."
"Fairy tales," Balii said smugly. "If what you say is true, then where is this Mordra? I see nothing but a small fire that might have gotten out of hand had we not come by at an opportune time and extinguished it."
"You will see," the man said, pointing a finger at Balii. "We ourselves have already experienced the power that is Mordra, as an unseen force rendered us senseless as we approached you. It is foretold in our ancient writings that she will return one day to judge our people and cleanse them of sin. If you have truly seen the first sign of her return and are concealing it from us, it will do you no good. Mordra will return to us as has been prophesized."
Taking a deep breath, Balii ignored the man. He walked up the hillside and again carefully and meticulously surveyed the countryside, unable to see anything other than grassy-topped hills, plains and sky. Darkness would begin setting in soon, and he knew that a relief party of soldiers would be arriving from Vandahar to replace them.
"What is he going to tell General Thadren?" Balii heard one of his soldiers ask.
"Never mind that," said another. "What is he going to tell the King?"
What indeed? Balii wondered quietly to himself.
Forty three kilometers west of Vandahar, Commander Data completed installing the Romulan shuttle's cloaking device into the Yellowjacket's engine system. Everything appeared to be working properly using the runabout's warp core as its new power source, but Data still continued to run a steady series of diagnostic tests that he had rapidly programmed specifically to minimize potential problems.
As he worked his mental functions were focused primarily on a complex analysis of the infamous treaty of Algeron that currently prohibited the Federation from using cloaking technology. There were lots of gray areas of course, and he was taking advantage of one of them now. Entering a final sequence of commands into the runabout's engineering console, he activated the cloaking device.
The Yellowjacket and the shuttle setting next to it were in a small, unpopulated valley that he and the ship's sensors had located. With darkness surrounding them, both ships suddenly vanished behind the cloaking screen. Instead of invisibility, however, Data adjusted the cloaking device's parameters and established one of the infamous holographic "duck blinds" that the Federation had taken to utilizing over the years. Morning and the sunlight would return, but anyone who happened to pass by on the ridge above would look down and see a grassy covered hill instead of two alien spacecraft.
He was fairly confident that any such hypothetical observers would fail to recognize the hill as an exact duplicate of the real one located approximately two kilometers to the east. It had been a fairly simple procedure to scan an image of the terrain into the ship's computer as he had passed over it on the way to his current location.
His thoughts returning to the treaty, Data remembered hearing that the Algeron guidelines had been temporarily suspended for the duration of the Dominion threat by a joint agreement between Starfleet and the Romulan Empire. The war was long over but the negotiations continued, and the Romulans were finding it much more difficult this time to restore the original treaty without giving up their own use of the cloaking device. Basically it was a "first strike" weapon and therefore technology difficult to justify by any government that was truly serious about lasting peace. Data intended to make full use of that gray area and the confusion it caused for the remainder of his stay on Stadia.
Finished with his adjustments to the engineering console, he returned to the Yellowjacket's cockpit area and reseated himself behind the helm controls. He displayed and studied a map detailing the layout of the region very carefully, planning his route into Vandahar. It had been more desirable to avoid entering the city but he had no other option left. There was still at least one other alien on the planet – probably captured and held within the city walls – and he intended to find and retrieve all evidence of extra-terrestrial contact before the bulk of the population discovered its presence.
"Computer," he said suddenly. "Please scan and monitor the interior of the Yellowjacket for the next sixty seconds."
"Acknowledged," the computer said in reply.
"I am about to initiate a self-diagnostic subroutine within my neural net," Data continued. "Please record the positronic signature and save a copy of its energy pattern." He sat very still for exactly thirty-four seconds and then activated his internal systems check.
"Positronic spike detected… pattern recorded."
As soon as he heard the computer's voice, Data cancelled the subroutine. "What is the maximum distance from which the Yellowjacket's sensors can detect this electronic signature?" he asked curiously.
"A positronic signature matching the pattern on record is detectable from a maximum range of seventy-two point nine kilometers."
"Excellent," Data said. "Please extend the sensors to maximum range. The next time you detect this energy pattern, lock on to its source and beam myself and anyone within a one meter radius surrounding me back to the Yellowjacket."
"Acknowledged."
Data had known that he would need to have a quick escape route planned in case he needed to return to the ship quickly. The electronic activation of his android self-diagnostic subroutine was the perfect solution, since he could now leave his Comm-badge behind. The only technology that he would take with him was… himself.
The Lieutenant Commander stepped up onto the transporter platform, double-checking the coordinates he had set. Energizing the transporter, he beamed himself to a spot just two kilometers west of Vandahar city. There he planned to wait until morning when the city opened its gates. At that time he would approach its people and locate the missing Romulan pilot.
Although most people would consider the progress that he had made remarkable, Data's emotion chip still sparked a small seed of anxiety within his android brain. Before descending into Stadia's atmosphere, he had taken the opportunity to use the Yellowjacket's sensors and record a great deal of data about the two primary nation states – Vandahar and Alucarn. Of growing concern to him were the massive sets of life signs that he had detected concealed in the forest covered hills just to the south of Alucarn's northern border.
There were also advance scouts already secretly probing into the southern regions of Vandahar itself, leaving little doubt in Data's mind that a massive army of soldiers from Alucarn would soon begin marching north. Deciding whether or not he had the authority to intervene and possibly prevent an all-out war was the next command decision that he would have to make.