The Assistant looked, to Jim's other eyes, to be more wary of them this time. The General was all business.
"Captain Kirk. I am sorry you and your people find yourself in the same predicament we do." He included Uhura and McCoy in his regrets with a gesture. "Have you heard from your ship?"
"No. We saw both of them jump."
"As did we, though we have not heard from either, nor been able to confirm our attempts to signal them from our shuttle are successful."
Uhura said, "If your shuttle's anything like ours, it probably can't produce a signal strong enough to get through the halo's interference."
"Very likely. We were considering trying the systems on the Twilight's Shining Teeth, which would be considerably more powerful." He glanced at Jim, then addressed Uhura again. "Your knowledge and assistance would be invaluable in this, and could allow all of us to escape."
Uhura looked askance at him, and he gave her a deferential nod. She told the General, "I'll help, provided we contact both ships, and all rescue operations involve our people as well as yours."
"It will be done. The ship will also provide larger facilities, should you find your shuttle to be crowded."
Jim nodded his agreement. As the Praxidians turned to depart, he found himself saying, "Speaking of your ship." They both faced him once more, and he felt McCoy's eyes on him like a warning. "What stranded it, exactly?"
Neither of them replied. Jim found it hard to reign in his impatience. "There's no hull damage-not the kind that would ground a ship like that. But if they came in here then they had to at least have an idea of how fast they had to get out. So what was it?"
The Assistant was looking at the ground. One of the General's hands made a fluid gesture. "Come. There is something we will show you."
They landed the shuttles not far from the ship. This close, Jim could see the hull was in remarkable condition; the worst word he could use in describing it was 'dirty'. He wondered, off hand, if they'd gathered enough sensor data on it for Scotty to figure out how it had remained in such good shape.
The Assistant remained in the shuttle this time. The General and the Engineer lead them along an uncertain game trail (McCoy muttered something about not wanting to run into any of the 'game', and Uhura murmured agreement) that tracked through bluish-white, crystalline trees to a massive cliff face that ice and time had carved into a natural amphitheater. They rounded a large boulder leading into the cavernous alcove and Jim stopped dead in his tracks, bile rising in the back of his throat.
A roughly circular mosaic of gleaming metal set into black, glassy rock stretched a good two hundred feet before them, reaching all the way to the back of the alcove. The colors and shapes were placed with an eye towards letting the viewer imprint their own ideas: if you looked at it this way, you might see a comet, or that way, a wild forest, or another way, a moonrise over an alien shore.
Jim stumbled back, forcing Uhura to step to the side; McCoy caught him by the arm.
"Are you alright?" Uhura asked him in a low voice.
The General hadn't noticed, but the Engineer was scrutinizing him. He met her eyes, and she looked away and moved to join the General, who was performing a ritual genuflection. She began to do the same.
Jim squeezed his eyes shut against the knowledge of what he was seeing. "I'm fine," he whispered.
McCoy growled, "You're not fine, you're the textbook definition of the opposite of fine."
Uhura kept watching the Praxidians. She cast Jim a look when they began to turn around.
"I'll be fine," he insisted, shaking himself free of McCoy and moving away from him. McCoy didn't look the least bit convinced, but Jim's set jaw seemed to put him off asking anything else. Jim sucked in the cold air and tried to dispel the idea that this was a conglomeration of dismembered body parts.
Once the General was facing them again, it was McCoy who asked, "What is this?"
"This is the manner in which our people honor the dead who do not wish to be, or cannot be, reclaimed."
A wave of light-headedness passed over Jim. Next to him he heard Uhura ask, "'Reclaimed'?"
McCoy added, "Like, organ donation?" and the General nodded at them.
"Just so."
He saw Uhura look over the General and the Engineer, taking in the places where their chitin gave way to metal. She said, slowly, "These are the remains of that ship's crew."
"Yes."
Jim was going to throw up if they didn't stop talking about this soon, but there was something they (he) had to know. "What happened to them?" he asked, dreading the answer.
"A plague."
McCoy and Uhura's widened eyes were enough to prompt a reassurance from the General. "Not one which could infect any of your people, even if it were still in evidence, which it is not. We tested for such possibilities when you said you would be landing on the planet."
"The entire crew of that ship was wiped out before it could get out of the halo?" McCoy didn't bother to mask his incredulity.
The General glanced at the Engineer, whose nerve bundles had flicked, then replied, "This plague was extremely virulent. That is how the ship came to be stranded here so close to the closing of the path. We have waited almost four hundred years to honor these crew and return this ship to our fleet."
Jim's head was starting to clear. It wasn't easy to look at the mosaic, but it wasn't nauseating anymore. While the General spoke, he noticed five silvery discs among the random assortment. They were all similar in design, unlike every other augmentation piece, and there was calligraphic script on each one. He looked away from them when he discovered he could read it.
It occurred to him that Uhura and McCoy were doing most of the talking, and he said the first thing that came to mind. "It was a biological weapon." He looked straight at the Engineer. "Wasn't it."
He now had the General's undivided attention. At a signal from the General, the Engineer replied, "Yes. It was."
"Never anything new under the sun, is there," McCoy muttered, and he shared a look with Jim that had nothing to do with their current situation.
Never anything new indeed. "But the ship's decontaminated now?"
The Engineer's gaze returned to the mosaic. The General said, "Yes. We would never enter it otherwise. My assistant and our systems engineer have seen to restoring the secondary power system, and the AI has cleaned the interior. It is safe to occupy."
Jim nodded, feeling drained. "Alright." He paused, then added, "Thanks. For telling us."
That seemed to be the correct thing to say, because the General and the Engineer both made gestures of appreciation, then led the three of them back to the shuttles. He could feel the Engineer's eyes on him the entire time.