Carol wasn't sure what to expect when Mr. Scott called her to Commander Spock's laboratory. Ever since they'd put the probes in orbit she'd been neck-deep in working out the properties of the shield surrounding the station, with the occasional break to monitor the warp core and recommend changes to help keep it stable. (She imagined she'd be able to write a paper on warp core interactions with magnetar fields once all was said and done.) Commander Spock was there as well when she arrived, and though he was his usual unflappable self, Scott was a bundle of nervous energy. He only got that way when he thought something interesting and exciting was afoot, and what he thought was interesting or exciting could put gray hairs on Carol's head.
"Commander, Mr. Scott. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Dr. Marcus. We have new information concerning the facility, and I believe it would be beneficial for you to continue your work here, in my laboratory, with Mr. Scott, in light of it. I have asked Lieutenant Chekov to continue monitoring the warp core."
"New information?" Carol glanced from the commander to Scott and back.
"The inhabitants of the station have made contact and given us what they claim to be the specifics of how to transport onto it. We will need you and Mr. Scott to verify their information before we can proceed."
She hadn't dared imagine they might think of sending anyone to the structure at this stage. Carol tried to mask her surprise. "Understood, Commander."
Scott pulled up an array of equations, tables, and schematics on the display, saying, "So, this is what they sent us." It was a very different approach than Carol had been taking, and she would have to redo a good deal of her own calculations to make a proper comparison, though if she was being honest with herself she'd been intending to do that anyways to double-check.
Carol added her current work from her tablet to the display with a gesture. "Right then. Shield first?"
Scott agreed, and they settled in. Sometimes they would sit at the lab bench chairs as they traded ideas or debated principles. The commander watched and listened, only offering a comment now and then.
They had just finished-all of the math lined up, and Carol was pleased to have independent evidence regarding the shield which validated her observations-when the captain's voice interrupted their conversation.
"Kirk to Commander Spock."
"Yes, Captain."
"Arkoryx is ready to talk to us. Can you meet me at his shuttle in the hangar bay?"
"I can, Captain." Before leaving, he said, "Thank you, Dr. Marcus, Mr. Scott. Your work is appreciated. If you would wait here, the captain and I will return with our guest shortly."
Carol and Scott organized everything to make it presentable while they waited for Spock to return with the captain and their guest. As they worked, Scott asked her, "Have you met him yet?"
"The Praxidian?" He nodded, and she shook her head. "What's he like?"
"Well, I don't know a damned thing about them-their body language is nothing like I've seen before-but if the captain and commander's reactions are any indication, he's a complete arse."
Carol blinked. "Oh."
Scott began to elaborate, but the turbolift doors opened, and out stepped the Praxidi guest, the captain, and the commander. The captain kept the introductions brief-Carol wondered at the notion of an 'Explorer's Guild'-and said, "Dr. Marcus, Mr. Scott. What do you have for us?"
Scott gestured for Carol to take the lead, and she walked them through their own data, the information provided by the inhabitants, and their comparisons. Arkoryx asked a number of clarifying questions, and when they were done, laid out his intentions: transporting a small, mobile probe to the station to confirm that the receiving pad was in a safe location and functioning as claimed, then putting a small, five-person landing party on the station.
Jim looked between to Scott and Carol. "If you had help from a Praxidian Engineer, do you think you could alter a transporter to go through that shield?"
Scott shifted. "Transporting from the Enterprise, or one of their ships?"
"Both."
Carol saw Arkoryx twitch, and wondered what Jim was planning. Scott looked to her, and after thinking it over, Carol said, "I believe so, Captain."
Jim turned to Arkoryx. "Would your people be amenable to that?"
Arkoryx stared at the captain, and Carol had the distinct impression an entirely separate conversation was happening that no one else in the room could see or hear. Then Arkoryx dipped his head, and said, "Yes, Captain Kirk. I will send for one at once."
The engineer who arrived was a broad and short Praxidian-she didn't quite reach Scott's shoulders, and was easily twice his width-and her nerve bundles were tightly bound in an elaborate braid that fell half-way down her back. Her chitin and augmentations were a dark brown with a silvery sheen, and Jim introduced her as Oureka, the Waterbourne's 'Master Engineer', which Carol assumed meant she was an equivalent to Scott. She only brought two instruments with her, though from what the captain had said about the Praxidians, she probably had enough augmentations to qualify as a handful of instruments all on her own.
Pairing the transporters to the facility's landing pad was slow going, but the combined group of Carol, Scott, Oureka, and Chekov had prototypes on both the Enterprise and the Waterbourne up and running within a day. Carol felt a palpable thrill of success when a small probe materialized on the facility's landing pad and returned a clear video and audio feed as it began to explore.
"Not bad," Scott said as the captain clapped him on the back and grinned at all of them. "Looks like we can successfully transport to it."
It moved out of a dark, plain room and into a hall, and from there into a much larger, open space. This room was shot through with sporadic lights on consoles, wall panels, and other unrecognizable equipment. Two hulking shapes loomed nearby, and Jim confirmed the readings' indication that these were robot drones under the control of the Inhabitants (as the captain called them). They were bipedal constructs, with arms and legs and something approximating a head, and in poor condition: they sported numerous dents and scratches, and in some places missing panels exposed their underlying circuitry and wiring.
The excitement of their accomplishment faded into the necessity of the next phase: transporting the Praxidian landing party over and seeing what evidence the Inhabitants could provide. They watched the group of five materialize through the probe's feed (Carol thought Scott looked relieved to see living beings make the trip successfully) and begin a path down one of the side corridors out of the large room as directed by the two drones. They came to another large, open room, this one with two wide, clear forcefield doors that deactivated as the drones approached. The Praxidi were slow to enter, and slower still to bring in the probe.
The first handful of images on the video feed were all any of them needed to see. Carol stopped watching as soon as she began to understand it was the remains of a research lab that had been used on large, sentient subjects; enough samples and pieces of equipment were intact to make that clear.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jim, Commander Spock, and Arkoryx continue to watch, but Scott averted his eyes as well, swallowing. "God have mercy," he whispered under his breath. The examination of the room continued for some time, and the commander of the landing party indicated he was sending out their findings to all of the ships.
His eyes still on the gruesome tableau before them, Arkoryx observed, "It would appear the Inhabitants' claims are true."
Carol was back to monitoring the probes orbiting the star when Commander Spock called her to Transporter Room Two. She arrived to find Lieutenant Gaila from Computer Engineering there, along with Mr. Scott, the captain, Commander Spock himself, the two Praxidi, and a four-man security team that included Lieutenant Hendorff. Oureka stood with Mr. Scott and Gaila, while Arkoryx was next to Jim and Commander Spock.
The captain was staring out across the room with the same distracted expression he had when he was communicating with the Pilots or the Inhabitants. She tried not to let it remind her of the weeks just prior to the Tullianum Nebula incident, because that was not a pleasant memory.
Commander Spock's voice cut into her observations. "Dr. Marcus. Engineer Oureka will be joining you on your mission with Mr. Scott, Lieutenant Gaila, and the security team."
"What's our mission, Commander?"
"We and the Praxidians have agreed to help the individuals being held captive on the facility to overtake it. Currently, we are only able to transport to the facility, because the Inhabitants do not control the station's outbound transporter rooms. You and Mr. Scott will establish a bi-directional transportation system using the landing pad we have already secured. Lieutenant Gaila and Engineer Oureka will be determining a way to grant the Pilots of the Praxidi ships access to the primary software system, so that they may help the Inhabitants override it and disable the AI. In addition, you will all be working on reprogramming the robot drones from the facility to serve as additional security for your efforts."
Carol tried not to feel overwhelmed, but it was difficult. "Understood, sir."
Mr. Scott stepped forward and handed her a tablet. "This is all the data we have from the landing party and our scans. We'll have more once we're over there and can take direct readings."
Jim's expression cleared and he addressed all of them. "The Inhabitants have control of the life support systems on the station. They've also overridden the computer core's security, so those rooms should be the safest place for you to be." He nodded at Hendorff, who led his team onto the transporter pad, and they disappeared in a wash of white light.
"Well then." Mr. Scott stepped up to the transporter pad. Gaila and Oureka flanked him, and Carol placed herself next to Gaila. She swallowed against the fluttering in her stomach.
Jim looked at each of them in turn. "Remember, get the two way transport up first. I don't want anyone stuck over there."
Mr. Scott promised him, "Oh, don't worry, Captain, ensuring we have a way to get the bloody hell back is top priority," and Carol felt reassured by his certainty.
Jim gave them a faint smile. "Good luck."
Mr. Scott grimaced and said, "Here goes nothing." He shook himself out. "Energize."
A glaring brilliance engulfed them, and when it faded they were all standing on a roughly textured surface in a close, dim space. The room was poorly lit, cold, and had empty, dark gray walls and a single door with a small, glassy, black panel set to one side. A yellow, alien script that Carol didn't recognize crawled over the panel, and in the distance a low, humming drone overrode most other sounds, though on occasion she heard shrieking metal.
The security team stood in front of them, two crouched and facing out of the door into a hall while the other two watched the pad; one of these was Hendorff. The two at the door moved aside, and he lead everyone out into the corridor; more control panels dotted the walls, all filled with the same yellow script in harsh counterpoint to the dark gray metal and black glassy panels. The security team kept all of them surrounded as they moved into a wide, open space.
When they crossed the threshold from the hall to the large room, the temperature rose several degrees. This room was much brighter thanks to tracts of overhead lights, and filled with control panels, stations, and displays on all of the walls save for one. On that side a thick, glass-like substance formed a window into a cavernous expanse holding several hundred rectangular towers arranged in a pattern Carol couldn't determine from their viewpoint. Each tower was over three meters tall and another meter wide and deep, and all of them flickered with patterns of blue, green, and red light from layers of thin, white inserts.
Gaila and Carol stopped and stared. Strange, wave-like distortions seemed to ripple through the space between the towers, and Carol realized they were immersed in some form of liquid. She thought she could hear the rush of the fluid cycling by, carrying heat away from the clusters and into whatever served as a cooling system.
"Well now," Mr. Scott said behind them. "Spared no expense on their cluster, I see. Do you think those Pilots of yours can really hack that?"
Oureka had stopped to examine the system as well. "With the help of the Inhabitants, yes."
Carol tried to take reassurance from Oureka's words, but it occurred to her she knew next to nothing about Praxidi vocal inflection, and thus the Engineer could be as scared as she was.
Stop that, Marcus. Focus.
Mr. Scott moved to a long line of drones that had been propped up at one end of the room and clapped his hands together. "Alright. Gaila, Oureka, get this pile of drones converted, then wire in the Pilots. Marcus, you're with me. I figure we can see if any of these consoles will let us examine how that shield works in more detail, then take it from there."
Carol gripped her tablet. It was time to go to work.
