"Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?"
-John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE FRSL (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973), English novelist, poet, and linguist The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Chapter Six
Captain Erika Hernandez sat at her desk in Columbia's ready room, staring around her. She had a couple hours before they reached the outer system, and she was supposed to be going over her reports, which was easier said than done. I can't think today. I guess it's hard to think about status reports when your cargo hold is full of dead children. She looked out over the far wall. Like Enterprise, some sort of memorial to a prominent ship's namesake lined the walls of her ready room. On Enterprise it was a series of charcoal drawings, about every prominent ship named Enterprise in Earth's prewarp history. From that first HMS Enterprize, captured by the Royal Navy from France all the way back in 1705, to the Yorktown-class USS Enterprise that fought in the Second World War, to the USS Enterprise CVN-65 that served her native United States from 1961 to 2017, to that first prototype space shuttle and finally the pre-refit version of Archer's own ship.
Columbia's ready room decorations were arranged as a memorial to the American orbiter, the first space shuttle of her kind to actually go into space, that broke up with all hands over East Texas in 2003. A large charcoal drawing, in top-down profile, of a space shuttle, flanked by her first mission patch, STS-1 and her last, STS-107, bearing the names of her final crew. Below it, an individual color photo of each crewmember, as well as the group photo of all of them they took before lifting off on what would be their last mission. Flanking the group were two gold-fringed flags, one of the United States on the right and the State of Texas on the left.
Perhaps I can't help but think back to this mission, she thought idly. I can't help but think that my Columbia is going to meet her end in a similar manner in some freakish poetic burst of irony.
The companel on her desk beeped. "Bridge to Captain Hernandez," Commander Reyes's said formally.
Hernandez hit the accept button with unseemly haste. "Hernandez here, Lise," Hernandez said, somewhat more quickly than normal.
"Could you come to the bridge please, sir? Commander Naidu has an idea what those readings could be indicative of."
"I'm on my way," she said, turning off her computer monitor, and heading for the ready room door. When she got onto the bridge, she found the two women at the display table, chatting animatedly.
"Report?"
Reyes gestured at the tall, dark-skinned woman with jet black hair. Lieutenant Commander Aisha Naidu nodded and gestured to the screen on the wall.
"Ever since we've got here, I've been wondering why those readings seemed familiar," she punched up the reports and put them on the screen. "Then I compared it to Enterprise's mission in the former Delphic Expanse. In order to present his evidence to the Xindi Council, Captain Archer had to pass through a subspace corridor in order to reach the Council headquarters in time to avert the launch of the Xindi weapon."
"Yes," she said, nodding, remembering her friend's public debriefing by the late Admiral Forrest, "because of a problem with their impulse manifolds, the ship was thrown back in time. After a brief period of tension with their downtime counterparts, they managed to work together to avoid the initial incident."
"Right," Aisha said nodding, and she gestured at the data on the screen. "These are the long-range scans taken by Enterprise as she approached the corridor in the Hellespont Nebula." She tapped out another command, and another graph appeared on the screen. "And these are the readings we took when we entered the system."
Hernandez's eyes widened in shock. "They're very similar," Hernandez said, softly leaning forward to get a better look at the screen.
"Yes, sir," Aisha said, nodding. "And there's something else. These readings are virtually identical to readings picked up from time to time in Sol's Kuiper belt."
"So, what you're saying there could be a wormhole between Chara and Sol?" The shorter, olive-skinned woman with black hair cut short around her temples, asked, clearly skeptical. Wormholes and subspace corridors were two names for the same phenomenon, an Einstein-Rosen bridge linking two disparate points across vast areas of space. Along with the Alcubierre metric so successfully made practical by Zephram Cochrane in the 2060s, they were the only known solutions to Einstein's field equations. The only known ways to travel in apparent faster-than-light without violating general relativity.
"It's probable," Aisha said. "With most wormholes picked up by the Vulcans one or both termini tend to shift positions occasionally, usually over the course of centuries. I doubt this one, if it's out there, will be any different. In the short-term however…"
"In the short-term it could definitely boost our ability to power project down in this area, especially if someone's screwing around out here-,"
Hernandez never finished the thought, as the ensign manning the science officer's console peeked down into the station's viewer, dexterous hands sliding over his console's buttons as he collated information in response to it's beeping.
"Captain," the relief officer at the science station said, staring into the holographic viewer. "A ship just dropped out of warp in the inner system and-Mother of God!" The wiry young dusky-skinned man looked up from the viewer, a look of sheer horror in his face, his face drained of all color. "I just read a matter-antimatter flare! I believe her warp core just lost containment."
"My station, Ensign," Lieutenant Commander Naidu snapped, walking back to the science station, Ensign Gomez nodded jerkily and stepped aside, back to one of the sensor consoles along the walls.
"Captain," Ensign Yitzhak Rabin said, anxiety on the sandy-haired young man's voice. "Captain Archer is declaring an emergency and ordering us to turn around immediately. Apparently, the planet has been settled. By humans."
Captain Jonathan Archer stared at the screen, still hardly daring to believe the scale of what T'Pol was suggesting.
Shran, who was standing next to Hoshi Sato at the communications station turned to face her. "Lieutenant," he asked, "Is there anyone responding to our hails?"
"No, sir," Hoshi said, leaning over her board. "In fact, I don't think anyone down there has the capability. The only subspace communications signals in the area are being generated by us and Columbia. If they had widespread FM or AM radio capability, I'd be reading a bevy of local signals traffic in the light-speed radio bands. I'm afraid we're the only ones with radio communications, subspace or otherwise." Hoshi's console beeped suddenly. Hoshi's fingers played over her board. "Captain Hernandez is hailing us, sir."
Because of course she is, "On screen," Archer ordered.
The face of one of his closest friends appeared on the viewscreen, brown hair framing a face made taut by subdued anxiety.
"John," she began immediately. "I know what you're going to say, but there's been a complication," and proceeded to launch into her science officer's hypothesis as to what the readings represented.
"A wormhole?" Archer repeated, surprised, after she was done, "How sure is she?"
"Almost certain, and if even if we're wrong, it's worth taking a look, especially now."
"Erika," Archer said warningly. "The path of those debris is going to take them over one of the largest urban concentrations on any human world from what our sensor data is telling us. By the time we reach orbit even at maximum impulse people are going to be dying in the tens of thousands at the very least."
"All the more reason for me to run this to ground," Hernandez pointed out. She gestured sharply in the rough direction of the planet. "If we're faced with the worst disaster in human history since the limited nuclear exchange of the last century, we'll need all the help we can get. It's the difference between getting help in twelve hours rather than twelve days."
Archer sighed, fighting to keep the roil of emotions stewing within him under control as he leaned back in his chair. She was right, of course, "All right, but then I want you to haul ass back. Reinforcements or no I'll need you as soon as possible."
"I know, John," Hernandez said, nodding fiercely. "I haven't let you down yet, have I? And no, that climbing excursion in Chaco Canyon doesn't count."
Archer rolled his eyes, at her reference to that particularly disastrous camping trip to Chaco Canyon when they had been undergrads.
"Godspeed," Erika said pointedly. "To you and everyone on that planet. Hernandez out."
"All right," Archer said as soon as the viewscreen cleared, "as soon as we're in orbit I want as many detailed scans as we can get of the potential disaster area," Archer began. "And…start making preparations to send as many personnel down to the planet as possible. We'll leave a skeleton flight crew onboard the ship, as well as Phlox and his surgical staff. Our corpsmen will deploy with the rescue teams and they'll send as many as many of the serious cases up for treatment as we can handle before our medical supplies run out. Trip, I need you coordinating debris clearing to get to survivors, T'Pol I need you're coordinating our overall rescue efforts, Hoshi, your presence down there will be self-explanatory."
"And me?" Shran asked, an undercurrent of barely-suppressed excitement in his voice. Dire or not, this was one of the reasons he'd joined the Imperial Guard, something that could have been lost to him forever after losing his ship.
"You will be in command of the ship," Archer told the shorter Andorian thaan. "If it's anything like the world we encountered in the Expanse, the humans down there were transported here before official contact with other species. No offense," he said at the confusion in his eyes, "but T'Pol at least can pass for human at a distance, you can't."
Shran nodded. "I understand, Captain. While you're down there, I'll keep trying to find any ships in the region that can get here."
Captain Archer tapped his hands anxiously on the armrest of his command chair as he watched the planet steadily getting bigger in his viewscreen. Not a single unnecessary word was being said by anyone, and the tension around him was as taut as a bowstring, ready to recoil at any moment.
"I have the disaster projections ready, Captain" T'Pol said softly into the silence.
"Put it up on the screen," Archer ordered.
The main image of the planet shrunk into a window, replaced by the real-time sensor map of the planet-moon system and the returns of the cloud of debris.
"These are the objects large enough cause damage when they encounter the planet. Their trajectory will take them into the atmosphere at a shallow angle, indicating that they'll almost certainly airburst before impact." Green brackets appeared around the dots on the screen, with pop-ups indicating dimensions and probable yields ranging from half a kiloton to upwards of twenty megatons.
"Their projected track upon entering the atmosphere will take the majority of them over the extremely large conurbation in the northeastern corner of the main continent, odds approach one hundred percent that some of them will airburst at a low enough altitude and close enough to the area to inflict moderate to severe damage and casualties to the city and its environs."
"What are we looking at population-wise?" Archer asked.
"My estimates are of six hundred million for the entire planet," T'Pol said, and even he could sense just the slightest twinge of anxiety in his first officer's voice. "Approximately fifteen million for that city alone."
"My God," Reed muttered, the tactical officer's eyes widening at the thought of what even one of the larger yield airbursts could do to a city. Nuclear weapons had done as much to many of the major cities in the last century.
Hoshi's console beeped again, and his slender, olive-skinned comm officer hunched over her console, reading and verifying a message coming in over her earpiece. "Sir, I have a Priority One transmission from Starfleet Command. It's Admiral Gardner."
"Put him through to my ready room," Archer ordered, standing up and the bridge to the ready room door in quick, determined strides. Once he was sitting at his desk, he tapped the key on the computer monitor to accept the message.
The white-haired admiral's face appeared on the screen, a bright San Francisco morning shining through the window behind him, concern written all over the older man's face.
"I know you don't have much time left so I'll make this brief. I need to meet with the Prime Minister in five minutes to work out how to deal with this situation. We don't have many assets out that way. Or at all, for that matter. I need an up-to-the minute update before I go."
Ain't that the truth, Archer thought sullenly. Starfleet only has a few dozen ships, all but a fraction of them are between thirty and fifty years old, most of which can only do warp three, and that's on paper. The only Starfleet ships in the area that were anywhere close enough to render assistance were the two Ceres-class ships at Terra Nova, and even they would take roughly a week to arrive.
I hope to God Erika's hunch works out, he thought. "On that note, sir, Captain Hernandez has an idea."
"I'm all ears," Gardner said, leaning forward in his chair.
Archer explained the hunch Hernandez' science officer had. When he was done, Admiral Gardner leaned back in his chair in surprise.
"This is one hell of a shot in the dark, Captain," Gardner responded after a moment. "But you're right, it's one worth taking if we can get reinforcements and aid supplies to you in hours instead of weeks. Tell Captain Hernandez, however, that if she does not find anything actionable within two hours of reaching her destination she is to turn around immediately and come to you. I'll also alert Ceres and Charibdys and tell them to get out to you ASAP. It'll leave Terra Nova uncovered but they're products of the NX program as well, and with a disaster of the scale we're talking about-"
"Bridge to Captain Archer," T'Pol said over the intercom.
"Go ahead."
"Sensors just registered a five hundred kiloton airburst in the vicinity of the city about thirty kilometers above the surface. It's started."
"Your Imperial Majesty," the short, gray-haired usher said from the doorway, bowing low, "His Most Radiant Majesty the Fifty-Second Earth King will see you and your guests now."
Zuko looked at the small party that had accompanied him to the entrance to the Earth King's chambers. Mai, Katara, and Sokka, stood in the corridor with him, the latter carrying the large black bag with the captured weapon. Aang held the heavy wooden ark carrying the mysterious hourglass shaped crystal. The Avatar's gray eyes were still red-rimmed from crying, but he hadn't taken Appa and left like Zuko and Katara had initially feared.
"It'll be okay, Aang," Katara said softly.
Aang nodded. "I know, Katara," Aang responded, nodding vigorously, perhaps eager to be doing something other than dwelling on his relationship problems. "I think the reason I've been latching onto…what you've been up to lately is because it's easier than facing the fact that we're facing a new threat to the entire world and it hasn't even been a year since we dealt with the last one."
"You have us, Aang," Sokka said, determinatedly. "And you always will. We'll get through this."
"Damn straight, Aang," Zuko put his hand on his younger friend's shoulder, "Now let's get going, we don't want to keep our host waiting."
The four of them followed the usher into Kuei's massive office, stopping in front of his massive palmwood desk, and bowing low as one. The tall, thin young man, in his mid-twenties, stood up out of his massive hardwood chair and bowed back, the voluminous heavy robes of his office clearly weighing him down as he did so.
"Thank you for agreeing to see us on such short notice Your Most Radiant Majesty," Zuko offered politely.
"I could hardly afford to turn away the sovereign who controls three-quarters of my territory, now could I, Your Imperial Majesty?" Kuei responded, an ironic smirk on his face. Zuko's face flushed. You have to bring that up now? What happened to being polite. He opened his mouth to say something he probably shouldn't when Kuei held up his hand. "I'm not trying to start a fight, Your Imperial Majesty. I judge you to be an honorable man who's sincere in his desire to at least try to hammer out a peace both sides can live with, but the point holds. That being said, you do control the majority of my country's territory, you are still technically in a position to dictate terms."
"And I hope to hammer out that peace, with a minimum of dictating," Zuko said. It was, after all, the unvarnished truth. "But I'm not here to discuss territorial compromises and economic assistance tonight. There's a new threat on the horizon, that makes the scale of what my father planned look like a fight between a handful of pirates out in the back-beyond. I don't know why, yet at least, but they want this world for themselves like my predecessors did. They'll get if we don't work together to stop them. And if what we have to show you is any taste of their capabilities, they may get it anyway. You see, a few weeks ago…"
Zuko recounted his story, of the Kyoshi Warrior who'd given her life in front of his door and of Aang's vision in the Southern Temple, as confusing as it was.
Kuei leaned back in his chair. "I see," he said after a moment. "That's quite a story." He looked over at Aang pleadingly. "And you believe this, Avatar?"
"I was there for all of it," Aang said pointedly. "I wouldn't be here if any part of it weren't true, and if I didn't completely agree with my friends' conclusions…and their fears."
Kuei, with the air of a man who was looking desperately for a way out of a truth he didn't want to face but couldn't, leaned back in his chair, his shoulders sagging under the weight that he had dropped on the other man's shoulders.
"How," he said quietly, staring past them towards the door at some bad memory. "Do you propose we fight this new enemy, Your Imperial Majesty?"
He opened his mouth to respond, but never got it out, as the double doors behind them flung their way open, a heavy crack reverberating through the room as they smashed into the walls. He whipped around to see Ty Lee and a muscular young man in the green and black uniform of the Earth Kingdom Jade Guards, the Paramount Monarch of the Earth Kingdom's elite guard. Ty Lee, he noted was in the new Kyoshi uniform that had gone into effect before they left: green double-breasted tunic and red trousers with a blue stripe running down the inseam. The uniform colors had been approved by the War Ministry on Suki's suggestion, a recognition that Kyoshi's people were as much descended from the Fire Nation and the Southern Tribes as their mainland neighbors. A fact that had contributed both to their neutrality during all but the last year of the war, and to the salutary neglect they'd experienced prior to the war. Even Suki's contribution of forces to the mainland had mainly been directed at retaliating against him personally for burning down her home village and humanitarian concern for the plight of the refugees headed for Ba Sing Se then any deep patriotic attachment to the Earth Kingdom cause.
And the fact that the Earth Kingdom Government didn't say so much as a word about a Kyoshi Guards escort for the Firelord, or raise objection to the second daughter of a minor Fire Nation noble being in command of that escort sent a clear message that they were willing to recognize Fire Nation sovereignty over Kyoshi.
At the moment however, the youthful commander of the Firelord and Avatar's escort force was breathing heavily, having clearly run up the three flights of stairs to get to this suite. Her brown hair was slicked to the back of her neck and her uniform clung somewhat more to her…interesting contours than usual then it would have if it were dry.
"Your Majesties," Captain Ty Lee said through rapid deep breaths. "There's been an explosion of some sort, in the sky."
"In the sky?" Zuko asked, repeated, alarmed.
"Yes, Your Majesty," Ty Lee said quickly, her breathing leveling out. "It was at least as bright as the sun for a few moments. We're lucky my exec and I weren't looking in that direction at the time, we could have been blinded. But we have a bigger problem. Remember when that that tramp freighter carrying explosive jelly collided with another freighter and blew up in the harbor at Yu Dao? How far that blast traveled?"
Zuko's eyes widened in horror, remembering the blast that had rocked his ship so severely he'd sent her crew to action stations until he could figure out what was happening. His ship had also been the first to arrive on scene at what had been left of Yu Dao's waterfront, and the first to send rescue parties ashore.
"We need to tell everyone to get inside and away from the windows, now!"
"I already told as many of my people and Captain Chong's as possible," Ty Lee said, right as a deafening blast filled the room. The floor quaked under his feet and he found himself staring up at the ceiling.
Sokka stood above him, his hand reaching down. He grabbed it and hauled himself to his feet, ignoring the pain in his back muscles. He looked at Mai, and saw his girlfriend hauling herself to her feet using Kuei's desk before leaning down to pull Katara and Aang back up.
"Thanks, Sokka," Zuko said feelingly. "Everyone else okay?"
Katara nodded, eyes widened in shock. "I'm fine," she said, her voice trembling, "or I will be, at least."
"We've all been through worse," Sokka said, worry in his eyes. "We don't know if that will be the only explosion though. There could be a worse one coming, one that could do more than just rattle us a little."
Zuko pinched the bridge of his nose against the stress headache already building behind his eyes and turned to look at King Kuei. "The palace has an emergency bunker, right?"
Kuei, his glasses bent, and his hair ruffled by being knocked to the ground nodded vigorously. "We have an entire complex of underground bunkers in the event of an uprising or your people fighting their way inside."
"Good," Zuko said, a rush running down his spine as his body woke up to the fact that it was probably going to face action again. "We need to get as many of the palace's soldiers and staff, and ourselves into those bunkers as quickly as humanly possible."
"What about the people in the Middle and Lower Rings?" Katara pointed out.
"We don't know how much time we have," Zuko said shaking his head. "Hopefully people who felt that blast will start heading into basements or root cellars if they have them, but for now we have to get the people we know we can reach into cover immediately. I have a bad feeling about this."
"I'll get my people moving," Ty Lee said, right hand going to her left shoulder in salute before she bounded back out of the room."
"You two, Captain," Kuei ordered the Earth Kingdom captain who remained in the doorway.
Chong snapped off his own salute turning and running out the doorway.
Zuko stared around him at the people remaining in his office, feeling better despite his fear. He wasn't really all that sure how good a Firelord he was, but he had spent the better part of his life as a naval officer, and the naval officer was who was needed right now. "What are we waiting for, people?" Zuko ordered, the man who'd commanded his own destroyer peeking out over the youthful monarch, "Let's go!"
"Well, Commander?" Captain Hernandez asked, walking over to the science officer's station. It had been thirty minutes since the five-hundred kiloton airburst picked up by the Enterprise had been relayed to them. The moment it had come in, she'd ordered a two-minute warp jump to the outer system in an effort to get to the source of the readings as quickly as possible. The ship had been rattled slightly but they'd dropped out of warp before any real damage could be done.
The younger, dark-skinned woman nodded, tapping out commands into her console. "I'm definitely picking up readings consistent with the type of subspace corridor seen in the former Delphic Expanse."
Commander Lisa Reyes gave her a look from the bridge engineering station. "Captain," her Manila-born first officer said, "I recommend sending a probe through first. The last thing we need right now is to end up half a parsec away in the middle of next week. Or last year."
"I agree," Erika said. "Commander-,"
"Captain," Naidu said, voice strangled in shock, "the feed from the Enterprise it's-," the young Indian took a deep breath. "Sir, there's been another airburst on the planet in range of the huge city. It's…the last one was five hundred kilotons, this one was fifteen megatons, and it airbursted six kilometers above the surface." All the quiet talk on the bridge suddenly ceased at the science officer's announcement, cultural memories of the war and nuclear fire their grandparents had endured in the second half of the last century rising to the fore. At least here there wasn't going to be any fallout.
"Jesus Christ," Reyes whispered softly, eyes widened, no doubt remembering from history class about the effects of explosions that size on the major cities during the Third World War.
"Screw the probe," Captain Hernandez said in a tone that brooked no argument, setting back into the captain's chair at the center seat of the Columbia's bridge. "Helm, lay in a course for the distortions and take us in. And God help us all."