Kappa-2 Monocerotis
10 years previously
There was a sympathizer in Starfleet.
Following Dr. Soong's abscondance with twenty genetically-enhanced embryos from Cold Station 12, the Earth government—the United Earth Parliament—declared Arik Soong to be a fugitive from the law, the most-wanted person alive. But no massive search was launched to find him, for everyone knew that he had disappeared, irretrievably, into the interstellar reaches.
Starfleet was not a law-enforcement body, the crime had not taken place on a Starfleet facility, and Dr. Soong was not a member of the service. Nonetheless, Starfleet adopted the search for Dr. Soong as one of its primary missions.
Years passed with few developments. The warp-five program had not yet come to fulfillment, and unable to launch a proper manhunt, Starfleet investigators were reliant on intelligence-gathering mechanisms. They would only launch their low-warp shuttles when they were certain of a destination.
Dr. Soong and his Augments never faded from the attention of the few people "in the know".
For Starfleet, finding Dr. Soong was a matter of pride, of restoring the agency's good name and good will with the Earth governments, and Starfleet's investigators applied a tenacity and persistence that would become the hallmark of Starfleet. They searched the heavens for years, looking for the subtle hints that would point them in the right direction. A tip-off from the Denobulan government struck gold.
Starfleet launched its low-warp fleet into the constellation of Monoceros, identified on their charts as the destination. Not wanting Soong to escape, the operation was kept at the highest levels of secrecy; the retrieval teams were not of their destination, nor even of their target, until they were in-flight. Communications silence was enforced, and only a handful at Starfleet Headquarters knew that the fleet deployment was anything more than an exercise. It almost worked.
Soong didn't learn until less than a day remained.
It was nighttime on Kappa-2 Monocerotis as Soong herded the children to the escape shuttle. They had been woken up in the middle of the night, and remained half-awake, sleep-walking to their destination, and milling around in confusion.
Soong pulled Raâkîn aside. "You must get your brothers and sisters to safety," the doctor told the tall boy, who was rubbing his eyes in an effort to wake up. "The coordinates are already programmed into the escape shuttle. It's an isolated, rocky moon far away from here. It's not much to look at, but you'll be safe—Starfleet will never follow you there."
Raâkîn glanced around at his brethren. Soong could see the doubt and the hesitation riding on the boy's shoulders.
"You're their leader," Soong said, kneeling down to eye-level. He held Raâkîn by the shoulders. "You're their leader," he repeated. "You are the strongest, the wisest. They will listen to you, and follow you, because that is the natural order of things.
"But in return, you must take care of them, and keep them safe. You can do it, Raâkîn; I believe in you."
The other children had slowly fallen into a rough line, snaking across the savannah to the shuttle pad. Soong stood back up.
"I must stay here, Raâkîn, to make sure that Starfleet doesn't follow you. Lead your brothers and sisters to safety, and keep them hidden there until I can return."
Raâkîn nodded, barely comprehending what was going on. His world was changing rapidly, flipping upside-down, and even for an Augment, it was a lot to take in.
Dr. Soong gave Raâkîn a pat on the back, and gently pushed the boy in the direction of the shuttle pad. As Raâkîn moved forward, his strides gradually became broader and stronger, the doubt disappearing under self-confidence. He took his place at the head of the line, ushering his brothers and sisters into the shuttle.
As his children left, Soong spared only a moment for wistfulness, before stealing his resolve and preparing for the imminent arrival of his captors.
...
Near Deep Freeze
June 5, 2154
How do you capture a fortress without damaging it, when its occupants would sooner blow the place up than hand it over?
Through speed and stealth: slip through the cracks and seize the controls before they know you're there.
Despite the value—to friends, foes, and unknowns alike—of the dangerous contents, the veritable arsenal of highly lethal pathogens, the Deep Freeze planetoid was light on weapons, relying instead on its sheer anonymity against the great reaches of space for its security. The last strains of hantavirus and cholera, spongiform encephalopathies, basic influenza, staphylococcus and the infamous yersinia pestis, all were held in the cryogenic canisters of the station. A single vial, released into the air, could wipe out a quarter of Earth's population; and if inflicted on an alien species, in another biosystem, they could bring about extermination.
But only a handful of aging pulse cannons protected the planetoid. Rather, it utilized a host of natural defenses to assure the safety and inviolability of its venomous contents. The primary facility—the cylindrical structure of laboratories, bedrooms, a mess hall, and engineering ductwork—were located under a hundred kilometers of hardened, frozen rock, the only physical connections to the surface being a handful of emergency exhaust chutes. The storage canisters were buried deeper, towards the core of the planetoid, connected by a tram tunnel that could be severed at a moment's notice.
Too deep for transporters. Tunnels lined with explosives. Emergency protocols designed to annihilate the station, rather than allow its capture. The appearance of a bird-of-prey would undoubtedly trigger a lockdown.
And the rogue planetoid had not been chosen at random. It was an aged veteran of interstellar space—frozen to the core, inured by radiation, and coated with a spray of metallic composites accumulated during a journey through a dissipating nova. The metallic coat, in turn, had been battered with hard radiation, converting the molecules into heat-suppressant isotopes, rendering the planetoid nearly invisible. Only a dedicated sweep would notice it as being anything more than a sensor glitch; and a close analysis would detect no activity beneath the surface sheeting.
It was harder than locating a pebble in a field in the dead of night.
Unless you have a trick up your sleeve.
"This is the Denobulan medical freighter Dolichantha." Sibirica pressed the earpiece tighter against her cartilage, straining to hear the distorted hail; beneath the crackles and pops of the subspace channel, a humanoid voice was barely detectable, its words too fractured to understand. "Please repeat."
She heard the voice again, scarcely any clearer; but this time, the communications buffer was able to pull a fraction of meaning from the twin broadcasts. The word cargo was distinct, as was leak; it was the third word, however, that chilled the Denobulan's blood. Delta.
As in, leaking delta radiation. If the assumption was accurate—and she couldn't take a chance that it wasn't—the call was critical. Delta rays, a form of radiation generated in the matter-antimatter reaction of a warp core, could kill living cells within minutes if allowed to freely vent. Even with immediate response, the radiation could cause debilitating and irreparable neurological damage.
Despite the medical imperative, Sibirica took an extended moment, contemplating her course of action. There was little doubt that the Dolichantha was the closest ship; these particular parsecs were uninhabited and far from any major transit routes. But that also concerned her, she acknowledged; stumbling across a cargo ship out here was so unusual as to be suspicious.
And she was hesitant.
She was no medic; even though the Dolichantha was a medical freighter, she was only a pilot, albeit one employed by the Denobulan medical authorities. What services could she really supply? Medical aid? Engineering assistance? What if the unknown crew had to abandon their ship—could she justify bringing strangers onto the Dolichantha, in the middle of a freight run to a classified installation? If she took them to Deep Freeze, they would be detained there indefinitely; but at least they would receive top-notch medical care…the facility, after all, had no shortage of doctors.
A snippet of philosophical maxim burst into her head, echoing back and forth; to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless, the maxim stated, setting out the basic obligations of any Denobulan. To be of service, it said.
As she weighed the options, the Dolichantha's computer clicked at her, announcing that it had located the source of the transmission. That settles it, Sibirica decided; and taking the serendipity as a hint, she altered her course, en route to the stricken ship.
...
Needless to say, it was not a damaged cargo ship.
...
"Deep Freeze, this is the Dolichantha, transmitting security code." On the floor of the freighter's cabin, Sibirica lay sprawled unconscious, having been saved from death only by the directed glare of Arik Soong. Pêrsîs sat behind the helm controls, handling the communications as well; in the background were Dr. Soong and five others, with the rest remaining on the Ba'Sugh, just out of sensor range.
The crackling voice of the unseen dockmaster replied. "Dolichantha, we are currently on heightened alert. Slow to one-quarter impulse and transmit security code."
"Transmitting," Pêrsîs answered, as she punched in the requisite commands.
The seven-member assault team held their breath until the response came. "Code confirmed," the crackling voice responded. It had been a risk; the security codes were not in the Dolichantha's computer banks, and Sibirica could have provided false codes. "You're cleared to proceed, Dolichantha."
Thankfully, Soong thought silently, grateful that the interrogation had been successful. He had not enjoyed it, but using the wrong codes would have resulted in a lockdown of the cryogenic core, sealing off the remaining embryos under countless kilograms of rock.
Under the light touch of Pêrsîs, the Denobulan freighter lowered itself to the rocky surface of the planetoid, its descent slowing as the spacecraft neared the preternaturally smooth floor of a mid-sized crater. When it hovered scarce meters above the rock, the surface parted suddenly, sliding open as if two doors granting passage within, and the Dolichantha settled into the camouflaged docking bay.
...
Speed and stealth.
And some brute force.
Nestling into the docking port, the Dolichantha came to a rest under the watchful eyes of Corporal William Drye. Eyeing the craft carefully, mindful of the standing security alert, the young man neared the craft slowly, his approach covered from behind by two pulse rifles wielded by twin MAD privates; overhead, their base commandant, Eric Stott, followed along with a quintet of camera feeds.
Everything seems ordinary, Drye noted, as he conducted an up-close scan of the craft, searching it carefully for weapons scarring, unusual energy signatures, or anything that might indicate a danger; the Dolichantha was a scheduled shipment, arriving on time, with all the requisite forms perfectly filed, but there was no point in getting lazy. Especially not when the Major's watching, Drye reflected with a slight smile.
Everything checks out. Gesturing to the twin guards to shift cover, Drye stepped back from the craft, repositioning himself three meters in front of the hatchway. He targeted it, raising his own pistol in a firm two-handed grip before shouting out loudly: "Clear!"
The bay doors locked behind him.
Sibirica, Drye repeated in his mind, calling up the name and face of the transport pilot; according to the abbreviated bio, she was a young Denobulan woman, under two meters tall, with a comparative age of thirty-odd human years.
The hatchway jerked open noisily.
That's not her, Drye noted mechanically, as his mind leapt into crisis speed; he hadn't even seen the face yet, but the uniform didn't match, wasn't the pale green utilized by the transport service.
He squeezed the trigger, directing the pulse into the heart of the blur of the movement before him, but it was too late; I'm not too slow, he noted automatically, his brain cataloguing and muting the pulverizing pain to his abdomen. He's that fast.
As Drye staggered backward, a boot smashed into his chest, knocking him back into the bulkhead.
The woman—it was a woman, not a man—was still moving in a blur, her actions visible by their effects. One private, his training lapsing for a critical movement, charged forward for combat before somersaulting backward, the force of a brutal kick spinning him over; he slammed, bodily, onto the floor, where he lay insensate, blood and gray matter oozing from the fracture in his skull. The second guard, his rifle aloft, squeezed off a single bolt before the assailant was on him as well; a fist to his face snapped his head backward, sending him reeling in daze, and a violent roundhouse kick connected to his chest.
The crunch of bones was audible as the second guard fell like a rag doll.
His own eyes blurring over, Drye was scarcely aware as the woman returned to him; in the halo of his vision, she looked conspicuously like an angel, a surprisingly young woman of uncommon grace and beauty, moving as if floating, her hair still flying about as if caught on the wind…like an angel, Drye repeated to himself, an angel come to take me away.
He only dimly noticed as she pointed his discarded pistol at him and fired.
...
By the time Soong stepped from the transport, the assault was complete; the guards subdued, the room secured, and along one side, next to a torn sheet of reinforced plasticine, Orîâs lay contorted inside a maze of conduits and circuitry. As the bay doors ruptured open, triggered by the emergency release, Soong gave himself the fleetest moment of pride in his children before his face hardened over, setting in a disciplined and dispassionate stare.
Around him, the youths continued to move, their swiftness marked by uncanny precision as they moved into the corridor, unleashing a flurry of fire on the overwhelmed guards within; heavy doors slammed open with a resounding clang, granting ingress to the security office beyond. Soong jogged forward, prepared to help his children with the computer codes needed to pre-empt the security shutdown; but when he arrived, scarce seconds later, Orîâs
was already relaxing in a chair, the deed finished.
"Well done," Soong murmured, himself a little surprised by the swiftness, the meticulousness, and the foresight shown by the youths; it alarmed him slightly, the realization that his children were moving far faster than he could oversee, changing tactics and strategies several times in the blink of an eye, but he shelved the concern for later. For now, there was still a task to complete.
Soong alone held the final access codes—it wasn't that he distrusted his children; rather, it gave him a valuable hiccup of time to slow the assault down, reassess where they stood, and reassert his command over the operation. But all seemed to be occurring as specified; and punching the buttons on a console, Soong inserted the lockdown commands.
Protocol 047. Oddly enough, the most infamous number in security codes.
The hiss of anesthesia was audible, even to Soong's non-Augmented ears; unclipping a breathing mask from his belt, he pressed it over his face, securing the straps behind his head. The mask was tied to a pony tank of air; a few hours' worth, at most, but that was far more than needed.
With a nod and a curt gesture, Soong motioned for the assault team to proceed into the core of the station. The Augments, after all, would not need breathing masks; their beefed-up respiratory systems could handle the anesthezine.
...
Dr. Jeremy Lucas. Fellow of the Interspecies Medical Exchange; a viral pathologist of the highest order and repute; added experience in exomedicine, having spent three years on Vulcan and two on Denobula before returning to Earth in the wake of the first Xindi attack; tapped as an interim administrator at the Pathogenic Analysis and Cyrogenic Storage Facility, colloquially known as Deep Freeze.
He was a rotund man, his shape bearing a distinct resemblance to a Tellarite clad in a white lab coat. Amid the fleshy folds of his face, two small eyes were set in deep, hiding behind an archaic pair of eyeglasses with a pair of two-inch magnifying binoculars affixed in front; and beneath a bulbous nose was a thick, bristling mustache, standing out in sharp contrast to the thinning hair atop his head.
"Dr. Lucas!"
Lucas swore softly as his head darted automatically, looking away from the virogenic sample for the critical split second. On the sample dish before him, two strands of nucleic acid were dancing about each other in subtle rhythms, teasing one another with their nearness before jumping back; the actions and reactions were something beyond instinctive, far from intentional, having more in similarity with ionic attractions than any true form of life.
When Lucas looked back at the sample, the two strands had fused together. It was recorded, he knew, somewhere in the banks of the omnipresent computers; but somehow, that wasn't the same as witnessing the virogenic formation firsthand.
Lucas sighed and returned to the interruption. "Yes, what is it?" he asked, plastering a friendly smile over his irritated frown.
It was a junior pathologist, a young man of Indian-Meghalayan descent. "Our defense protocols just came on," Dr. Prabhakar answered, visibly affright.
Lucas' face, already pale, became ghostly white. "Did you contact Security?"
Prabhakar shook his head frantically. "I can't reach them," the young doctor replied, stumbling helter-skelter over the words. "The comm links are down!"
This isn't good, Lucas reflected, but panic won't help. Security at Deep Freeze wasn't taken lightly anyway, and the entire staff had been briefed about a potential attack; it might simply be a computer glitch, but he wouldn't take the chance.
"Initiate lockdown!" Lucas barked across the room. The other staffers, unaccustomed to such a forceful command from their boss, turned to look for a second; but the glare in his eyes sent them scurrying, slapping in commands that would isolate and seal off every bit of the station.
We can handle this, Lucas thought to himself, taking care to subdue his own swelling sense of panic. A veteran of many security drills, he had never before faced a genuine alert; but he quashed that part, focusing instead on the task at hand, focusing as if conducting just one more drill.
"Doctor Lucas!" Prabhakar shouted, and Lucas' head whipped around; he heard the hissing sounds as well. "It's the vent ducts!"
"What the hell?" Lucas squawked, his tentative discipline slipping away in the face of dismay. With scrambling hands, he grabbed a handkerchief, pressing it over his nose and mouth. He knew the danger; the security protocols were pumping anesthesia into the station core. He only had a little time to think, a little time to shut…it…off…
...
"Range, forty light-minutes," Travis reported promptly, keeping his tones short and precise; a palpable air of tension hung upon the bridge, cloaking it as if in a magnetic field. "ETA, two hours." He had just brought the starship out of warp speed, easing its path into a graceful approach vector towards the dark, rogue planetoid; the secret installation lay before him, invisible to the eye, and barely visible to the navigational sensors.
"Slow us to half-impulse," Archer ordered. The captain, unable to sit still, stood behind the helm as his eyes hunted the front viewscreen for clues. "Any sign of the Bird-of-Prey?"
At the back of the bridge, Malcolm checked the tactical sensors again before responding. "No, sir," he replied, his tone made more suspicious by the Ba'Sugh's apparent absence. "I'm not even detecting a warp trail, sir."
Now that's curious, Archer reflected, feeling the same trepidation that Malcolm had voiced. It was hard to believe that the Enterprise had beaten the Augments to Deep Freeze; perhaps if they stopped off along the way… they wouldn't know for certain that we'd crack their destination, but why would they take the chance? Time was of the essence.
No. Unless the Augments had made a considerable tactical blunder—possible, but extremely unlikely—they would have come straight to Deep Freeze. Which means, one, this wasn't their destination after all; or two, they arrived in another manner. Archer's mouth twisted wryly as he found himself mentally consulting the logic of his absent science officer. Let's assume it's the second; so how would they have arrived?
"Captain, we're being hailed by the facility!" Hoshi's surprised voice startled Archer from his thoughts. "Confirmed, sir," Hoshi added before the captain could ask. "The security codes all match."
Everything seemed to be in order, but something felt wrong to Archer. "Open the channel," he told Hoshi, subconsciously smoothing the front of his uniform coveralls as he turned back to the viewscreen. What's going on over there?
...
"The Enterprise is answering," Orias noted, confirming the whistling beep of the station's comm system; the assault party, six Augments and Arik Soong, sat in the primary control room, having cracked in and commandeered the heart of Deep Freeze.
"Ah, Captain!" Soong gave his best, warmest smile as the image of Jonathan Archer filled the station's comm screen. "I wish I could say that it's been a while."
"I wish it had been a while," Archer retorted, his jaw clenching visibly on the screen as he spoke. "You're not going to get away with this."
Brushing off the vague threat, Soong smirked back at the captain; Archer was playing into his hands, but the doctor wanted to give a little more rope before pulling the trap shut. "Au contraire, mon capitan," he replied, his voice dancing in a mocking lilt. "I'm trying to bring life to humanity, and you are trying to prevent it. Don't you see, Captain?" Soong stepped closer to the screen with a saunter. "I am trying to do good for humanity; it is you who is trying to, as you say, 'get away' with something."
"Stand down, Soong," Archer rejoined. "If you want to preserve lives, you should start with your own."
"Captain, captain, captain." Soong clucked softly as he shook his head, his ease in stark contrast to Archer's tension. "I don't think you understand the situation, Jonathan." Stepping aside from the camera pickup, he waited for the captain's reaction to the scene behind.
Archer's face underwent a rapid flurry of shock, fear, anger, and resolution.
"You see, Captain?" Soong edged back into the field of vision. With one hand, he gestured to the Deep Freeze doctors, scientists, and support staff lined up against the rear wall. On either side were three Augments, pulse rifles pointed at their captives. "So, Jonathan, just how serious are you about preserving lives?"
The insincere friendliness dropped from Soong's voice as he continued. "Leave the area, now, Captain, and they won't be harmed."
Archer swayed back momentarily before regaining his balance. "You're not a cold-blooded killer, Soong."
"What parent won't kill to save their offspring?" Soong shot back quickly, unable to catch himself. "Turn your ship around. Now!"
"Enough!" The barked imprecative came from behind Soong, startling the doctor as he twisted about. Maâlîk had moved to the forefront of the station's staff, and was pointing a Klingon disruptor pistol at one of the captives. "The conversation is over!" the young man snarled angrily, directing his ire at the bickering twosome. "You! Captain! Leave the area, or they die!"
"Maâlîk!" Soong's own voice rose in fury. "Step back!" The doctor quivered in unconcealed anger, furious at the youth, furious at his own loss of control, and furious at his loss of face in front of Archer.
Soong was stopped cold by the stare of palpable hatred and rage flowing from Maalik.
"You're still approaching the station, Captain!" Maalik barked out, turning his attention back to the viewscreen. "Leave!"
The image of Archer finally regained its own composure. "And if I don't?" the captain asked quietly.
Maalik tilted his head to a random prisoner. "Then he dies," the Augment stated, and he squeezed the trigger.
Dr. Prabhakar screamed in mind-boggling pain as his body was torn to atoms.
For the first time, Soong felt afraid.