Chapter 3 – Shiny Things
"No life signs?"
"None."
"But you sent your crew in despite your wife's premonition?"
"It was not a premonition. My wife is an empath, not a fortune teller."
"Will…"
"My apologies, your honour. Commander Troi's empathic receptions were not sufficiently well-defined, and not backed up by any sensor readings so as to provide me with any reason for hesitation concerning the away team. By contrast, the geology of the asteroid group was unusual enough to warrant exploration, especially with a potential source of dilithium on that planetoid. You will be aware that it is a sought-after commodity."
"Knowing what you know now, would you have acted differently? And sent an away team into danger?"
"With all due respect, your honour, hindsight is not something for which we have developed sensors, and speculation is not my forte. And danger is a daily companion in space."
Banking the Flyer through the asteroids, Tom Paris was reminded once more just how much of his soul was tied to the wonder of flight. He resisted the temptation to add a few extra curlicues to his flight path, but there was no denying the exhilaration he felt as the shuttle swooped around and through the mass of rocks, dull black against the pink and purple backdrop of the nebula. Lieutenant Jones, who had not previously seen his XO behind the helm, was mesmerized by the long fingers dancing over the oddly configured console, as if their owner was playing a Chopin suite. He had resisted signing up for one of the Commander's piloting classes, fearing that it would cut into his recreation time, but this looked like so much fun he found himself changing his mind.
Harry Kim, who had witnessed this particular spectacle rather more times than he cared to remember, focused on his own instruments instead, updating his readings and adjusting the Flyer's shields to compensate for minute fluctuations in the outside radiation. Dan Jansson, the tall, thin Chief Geologist, in turn was bent over his tool kit, making last-minute calibrations. Preferring to have both feet - and quite possibly his hands and knees as well - on solid ground, the geologist emitted the occasional curse when the inertial dampeners were a little slow in responding to Tom's lightning-quick maneuvers.
Ensign Sonia Mitchell, for her part, could barely contain her excitement at having been chosen by the Chief Geologist for her first away mission. Fresh out of the Academy and on her first assignment, she had resigned herself to the fact that it would be at least a year or so before she might get the chance to work outside the ship and had been prepared to settle for conducting specimen analysis in the Enterprise's labs. Just being on the Fleet's flagship would have been enough for her – this away mission was above and beyond her wildest dreams. She was practically bouncing; Tom felt tempted to call her 'Tigger'.
"Thank you so much, Commander, for allowing me to come," she breathed for about the third time, as she kept her eyes glued to the view screen. "I promise I won't disappoint you. I wrote my graduation thesis on dilithium crystals, so to actually be the first to investigate a new deposit is such a privilege …"
Tom and Harry exchanged amused glances as she prattled on. "Remind you of someone, Har?" Tom asked softly, biting back a grin. "Ensign Eager…?" Harry chortled. "I swear, I was never this young." Tom shook his head, refusing to rise to the bait.
Instead he turned to Mitchell. "Just remember, Ensign, away missions are about more than doing the job you are used to doing onboard. There is no script, and you will have to be ready for anything. If necessary, that includes flying this shuttle back to Voyager with our bodies in the cargo hold."
Jones cackled, while Mitchell squealed a little and Harry rolled his eyes. "Some reassuring superior officer you are, Commander, sir." "Just reminding Ms Dilithium of her academy training," Tom whispered back. "You never know …"
At that, Tom banked the Flyer around the largest of the asteroids, their target having been acquired. "Estimated three minutes to landing," he said, completely focused on his instruments now.
Harry responded instantly, fully immersed in the back-and-forth between helm and ops they had practiced a hundred times. "Adjusting for 80 percent gravitational pull. Lowering shields to allow for set-down." "Landing struts set. Everyone – assume secure landing positions, protocol for unstable terrain. Going down." A soft, butterfly-light touchdown was taken in stride by Mitchell, who had little basis for comparison, but caused Jones and Jansson to exchange glances.
"My lady, gentlemen, the Flyer has landed. Please take your candy wrappers and newsvids with you as you depart. Thank you for flying the Friendly Skies."
Harry snorted. He ran his instruments through atmospheric verification checks twice before announcing that while the atmosphere appeared breathable, there was sufficient radiation to suggest that protection for those exiting the Flyer was advisable.
"Light EVA suits should do it, including face shielding, but no oxygen tanks required," he informed Tom. "Reinforcing external radiation shielding to the Flyer."
Tom scrambled into his protective suit – not his favourite garment by a long shot, but he also had sufficient experience with ambient radiation not to wish to rely on a mere hypospray for protection. Jansson spoke up. "Sir, based on the scans we took it looks like the terrain could indeed be unstable. With low-grav conditions, we may find ourselves knocking things off, causing slides."
"Good point, Jansson," Tom responded. "Harry, keep a transporter lock on us just in case. Can you do that through the rad shielding?"
"Affirmative. Have a nice walk, folks - sir. Comm links are open." Harry busied himself with putting the Flyer back into take-off settings, already running pre-flight checks as Tom led the team out through the rear hatch.
Tom looked around the landing site. He had managed to locate a relatively flat surface to bring the shuttle down, aided by the craft's small size, but the site was surrounded by solid rock faces and a few enormous boulders, which looked like they had been scoured by a blast of some kind. He scanned the closest one with his tricorder. There were no apparent signs of life of any kind, no lichen, no spores, nothing.
"Jansson," he called through the EVA suit's comm link. "Can those striations be the result of natural erosion?"
The geologist shook his head. "There is nothing here that could move these boulders around on its own – insufficient meteorological activity, no water to cause erosion, and no evidence of tectonic plate movement. The only possibility is seismic activity or catastrophic external intervention. They may have come from outside this asteroid, part of the shards we saw. I'll run an analysis on the possibilities if you'd like, sir."
"Sure, sounds good, go ahead. Anything we can learn about the conditions out here is useful. Stay in view of the Flyer though since you're by yourself. Mitchell, Jones and I will go look at the dilithium deposit."
Tom led the team towards a small opening in the rock face where his tricorder, linked to the earlier sensor readings, indicated the presence of dilithium as well as a cavern. The lower gravity made the scramble over the loose, uneven surface a lot less strenuous than it might have been on Earth. His inner ten-year-old had always preferred low-grav environments to full-out space walks for their pure fun factor, and he had to resist the urge to bound over the rocks just to see how fast and far he could go. Tom sighed to himself. Commanding officers did have to set some standards of decorum …
He shone his wrist flashlight into the tunnel. "Alright, let's set up illumination posts every 10 meters or so," he instructed Mitchell who had brought the case of spot lights with her.
"Aye sir. Do you want me to do seismic checks before we go in?"
"No it's okay, we can do that from the Flyer. Harry, did you hear that? Can you do seismic scans for us?"
"Sure thing. You going in now?"
"No time like the present," Tom responded and waved Jones forward to set the lights at the indicated intervals, ahead of himself and Mitchell, who was carrying a couple of sample collection boxes. The cave was narrow and the footing a bit loose in places, but the ceiling was of sufficient height that even Tom could walk without having to duck.
After a few twists and turns the corridor opened into a wide space, a steep but not too deep slope leading into an open cavern. Mitchell stopped dead in her tracks.
"Holy shit," she breathed as her small flashlight threw back sparks and lights, refracting the beams into a million rainbows. "Oh, sorry sir. I got carried away." Tom chuckled. "It's alright, Ensign. You took the words right out of my mouth. Harry, you should see this. I have never seen so much dilithium in my life. It's … unbelievable. It's just stunning." Jones let out a long, soundless whistle.
Dilithium. The walls of the cave were lines with hundreds and thousands of the rare, pure white crystals, so necessary for the matter-antimatter conversion in the Federation's warp drive technology. All of them had seen the crystals before, of course, but never in such quantity. And here, in their natural setting, Tom appreciated for the first time just how breathtakingly beautiful they were. He certainly could not begrudge Mitchell her child-like enthusiasm as she practically ran into the cave, looking this way and that, beaming a smile so broad it practically illuminated her view plate from within.
"Slow down, ensign," he laughed. "The incline here is pretty steep and the rocks likely loose. The last thing we need is to have to carry you up a scree with a broken ankle. Even in low grav that's tricky." She turned to him, waved her understanding and proceeded to move at a somewhat more sedate pace.
Once into the cave proper, Tom broke a small crystal off the wall, and handed it to Jones. "What do you think?" he asked, softly, not wishing to spoil the mood in this magical place. "Can we work with this?"
Jones held the crystal up to the flashlight on his right wrist, then sat it down on a rocky outcropping and ran his tricorder over it a couple of times. His face told Tom everything he needed to know. "Sir, it's unbelievably pure. I've never seen anything like it."
"Alright," Tom squinted at the sight around him, watched his wrist light refracting into rainbow glitters off a thousand crystal planes, and squatted down on his heels. "Let's figure out a way to bring some of them out. Mitchell – what's the best approach to a spot of impromptu dilithium mining?"
The young ensign, who stood in the middle of the cave entranced by the view, reluctantly turned around to face her superior officer. "The smaller ones we can loosen by hand," she said. "We can cut the biggest ones off with a phaser. They won't shatter if we use the higher frequencies. On their own they are impervious to the de-molecularization process of our transporters though, so we will have to carry them out to the Flyer by hand." She lifted the sample collection boxes she was carrying to indicate that she had come prepared.
"All right then, let's do it, folks." Tom stood up again, and pulled his phaser out of its holster. "Paris to Kim. Heads up - we're about to loosen some rocks with phasers; you may notice a small fluctuation in the seismic readings." He reset his phaser to the highest frequency.
"Understood," Harry's voice came over the comm, flat and professional. Tom activated his comm badge again. "Paris to Jansson. Care to lend us a hand down here?"
Resisting the urge to whistle a tune from a 20th century cartoon he had watched with Miral which involved a bunch of dwarves engaged in diamond mining, Tom took one of Mitchell's collection boxes and headed towards a corner of the cave where he had noticed some particularly well-formed specimens. B'Elanna will love this, he thought with a smile. Anything that made her engines purr made his wife purr as well. Maybe he could bring a small crystal back and turn it into a piece of jewelry for her – ordinarily the crystals were too valuable for such extravagant use, but given the quantities here …
Tom shone his flashlight into the corner, to determine the best angle for cutting into the crystals that jutted out from the wall like horizontal icicles.
And froze.
Cowering in the shadows was a small figure, pale blue and somewhat translucent. A face looked up at Tom, slightly bulging iridescent spaces – eyes? - widened and started to whirl in what he presumed to be fear. The child-sized, almost featureless body – humanoid only insofar as it seemed to have a head, a torso and enough extremities to allow it to move - pressed up against the wall, the whirling eyes closed and as its head tilted back, the figure emitted a pulse of light. Its body grew brighter, incandescent, causing the crystals on the ceiling to throw jagged shadows.
"Paris to away team, we're not alone here. Repeat, we're not alone. Harry, do you read?"
As Tom was forced to hold up his hand to shield his eyes against the suddenly blinding light emanating from the creature, a sudden explosion rocked the cave, followed by a grumbling as the ground began to shake. Both Tom and the creature were knocked backwards. The EVA suit shielding neutralized most of the concussive effect and thanks to the low gravity, Tom was able to recover quickly and get back on his feet.
Time slowed down as adrenaline poured into his body, and number of things happened at once. The shaking of the cave intensified and he heard Harry gasp through the open comm link, "Seismic alert! Get out – NOW!" Tom tore his eyes off the now barely glowing creature, which had been flung against the cave wall by the force of the explosion, its head at a curious, unnatural-looking angle. Its inner luminescence seemed to be dimming as he watched and it no longer moved. He swung around. From a corner of his field of vision he saw Jones scrambling towards the cave mouth, pulled up and out by Jansson.
Where's Mitchell?
Ensign Sonia Mitchell sat motionless in the centre of the cave, frozen into place where she had been thrown, staring at the motionless alien, who was now but a shadow cast by one of the away team's toppled spot lights. Crystals started to shake loose around her, bouncing off her EVA suit, scratching her face plate, and yet she did not move. Tom knew instinctively that calling to the young ensign would only root her more firmly to the ground.
Got to get to Mitchell …
Tom bolted, scrambled across the rocks to reach her, swatting unthinkingly at the sharp crystals that were raining down on him. He cursed as he was hit in the shoulder by a particularly large piece, but felt no pain - for the moment. Thank goodness for adrenaline, his medical training whispered to him. Best painkiller ever invented. When he reached Mitchell he pulled her up and forward, hissing at her through his comm badge, "Come on Ensign, on your feet. That's an order. MOVE!"
She shook her head as if emerging from a trance, the spell broken just enough to enable her to cling to him like drowning victims often do to their rescuers, pulling both to their doom. Her dead weight made it impossible for him to make any useful progress, and there was no time to wait for her to start moving on her own. The cave was coming down around them. Silently thanking the benefits of low gravity, Tom picked the young woman up unceremoniously, slung her over his left – uninjured - shoulder and headed towards the cave mouth.
The already loose footing of the scree, rendered even more treacherous by the shaking floor and the crystals that were falling off the walls and ceiling, made the way forward painfully slow. With single-minded drive he headed towards the light Jones had set up earlier at the cave mouth, their only avenue of escape.
Tom uttered a noxious Klingon oath as an enormous rock, spiked with sparkling crystals that no longer held any beauty for him, rolled into his path, trapping his right foot. As if in slow-motion he saw a piece of the ceiling detach itself, and it was by pure instinct that he threw rather than dropped Mitchell on the ground, into the small space underneath the rock he had just so colourfully cursed.
Trying to cover her body with his own caused him to twist the knee in the trapped leg, and Tom screamed out with the sudden wrenching pain. Instinctively remembering to shelter the back of his head with his arms, wincing at the protest made by his right shoulder as he did so, Tom felt his left hand slowly get crushed. Then the breath was pushed out of his lungs as the weight of the entire ceiling seemed to press down on him.
As darkness closed in, his last thought was of Miral.