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Tev shook his head. “I had a dream.” He took a deep breath. “I was serving aboard the Madison. We were ordered to Brundage Point, to stop the Fury invasion.”

Gomez nodded. The Furies had attempted their third invasion of the Alpha Quadrant a few years before, and Starfleet sent three ships—the Enterprise, the Madison, and the Idaho—to counter the invasion. She had transferred off the Enterprise to the Oberth by that point, but she remembered the late Kieran Duffy telling her about that invasion attempt, which had come very close to succeeding.

“They used a fear weapon,” Tev said, his voice still and quiet. “It made nightmares real.”

“Your mother’s death.”

Tev nodded, biting his lower lip. “I hadn’t thought of her death for a very long time. When the Furies used their weapon, I was there aboard the passenger car. I saw my mother.” He closed his eyes tight. “I saw her. She begged me to help her. She didn’t want to die. No one did. I couldn’t do anything.”

“The accident wasn’t your fault, Tev.”

He nodded. “I knew that then. I know that now.” He paused. “Knowing that doesn’t keep me from feeling, though.”

Gomez sighed. She walked up to him, put her hands on his shoulders, and looked straight into his eyes. “Tev, we can’t change the past, neither of us. If we could, we would. Kieran, your mother…” Her voice trailed off. “We can’t make yesterday, but we can make tomorrow. I have to believe that to keep going forward.”

“I know, Commander,” said Tev softly. “I know.”

She dropped her hands from Tev’s shoulders. “Let’s get back to Pattie and the da Vinci. I want her analysis of the Kharzh’ullan repairs.” Tev scowled. Gomez found this unsettling. “Something bothering you, Commander?”

“I have my doubts about the Kharzh’ullan solution,” said Tev as he walked up the hill back toward the warehouse.

Despite her asking him to elaborate, Tev said nothing more on the subject until they beamed back to the ship.

Chapter

5

“Computer, pull up file Eevraith-Ring-One,” Gomez said with a sigh as she collapsed backward onto her bunk. If Eevraith’s was the definitive study of the construction of the Ring and the elevators, she decided that comparing the study’s analysis of the elevator’s composition, particularly its structure and flexibility, to the newly fashioned shell would be of immense aid in the repair job.

“Acknowledged.”

Gomez rubbed her eyes, as much out of exhaustion as out of habit. The morning’s visit to the palace had begun a promising day, but the next six hours of survey and analysis of the damaged elevator shaft and the Kharzh’ullan replacement hull took its physical and mental toll. “Begin playback, from subsection 14, paragraph 4.”

“Playback in Tellarite or Federation Standard?”

“Standard,” she said, momentarily confused.

“Acknowledged.”

Gomez closed her eyes as the computer’s recitation began. “The structural demands placed upon the shafts lessen exponentially as the elevator shaft approaches terminus—”

“Computer,” she said, interrupting the playback, her curiosity piqued. “What was the language of the original text?”

“Tellarite,” the computer replied.

It made sense. The study had been written by a Tellarite—Eevraith—for a Tellarite audience—his university professors—and the speech had the telltale sign of a speaker of Federation Standard who used it as a second or third language—too mannered, the syllables drawn out and the stresses misplaced. Kharzh’ulla IV, like so many non-human worlds, spoke Standard only when necessary, and oftentimes the universal translator worked just as well in everyday conversation between native and non-native Standard speakers.

“Computer,” she said, “resume playback from beginning of sentence.”

“The structural demands placed upon the shafts lessen exponentially as the elevator shaft approaches terminus, hence the narrowing of the shafts as they progress from surface to geosynchronous orbit. Theoretical models formulated of space elevators prior to the discovery of the Kharzh’ullan system relied upon ungrounded