Synthesis - James Swallow [94]
“Didn’t she also say something about it being exiled?” added Pava.
“It makes sense,” said Dakal. “Before the Null arrived, the Holiday’s sensors registered something emitting from this… machine moon. It probably observed the entire engagement from its orbit, safe outside the conflict zone.”
“And when we beamed off the shuttle, it snatched us?” Sethe’s brow furrowed. “What reason would it have to do that?”
“I am still developing a complete theory, Lieutenant,” said Tuvok. “But clearly, Zero-Three’s intentions toward us are not immediately hostile.”
Dakal’s helmet bobbed. “It’s far simpler to disrupt a transporter beam than to divert it. It could have scattered us to atoms if it wanted to.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any more well disposed toward it,” Sethe retorted. “Kidnapping isn’t an act of kindness.”
“The lieutenant has a valid point,” noted Pava, sparing the setting gauge on her phaser another look.
Dakal tapped his helmet. “The comm interference is just as bad up here as it was in the canyon. It’s the same pattern we encountered aboard White-Blue’s ship, when the automatic defenses came on-line.”
“It doesn’t want us calling home,” said Sethe. “We’re cut off from rescue!”
“Captain Riker will be searching for us,” Dakal insisted. “When the Holiday’s wreckage is found, the lack of organic matter within it will indicate our survival. We need only to stay alive until we are located.”
“I have a more proactive plan in mind, Ensign,” Tuvok told him. The Vulcan toggled his communicator to a wideband setting and activated it. “Zero-Three,” he said to the air. “FirstGen Zero-Three, active Sentry, actual. I am Commander Tuvok of the Federation Starship Titan. Will you communicate with us?”
For long seconds, none of them spoke, and only static hissed back in reply from their helmet speakers. There seemed to be chaotic patterns in the sound, and the Vulcan strained to pick them out.
At his side, Pava gave an involuntary shudder, her antennae flattening toward her brow. “Did you hear that? On the edge of the sound, something faint?”
While Vulcan hearing was highly sensitive, Andorians perceived a whole other order of subsonics through their cranial feelers, along with subtle perturbations of electrical energy. “What was it, Lieutenant?”
“Just for a second, it sounded like… I don’t know, like whispering. Like laughter. And not the good kind.”
Tuvok raised an eyebrow. Clearly, the security officer was allowing her heightened emotional state to affect her reading of the situation.
“There’s a light, over there,” said Sethe, moving to the top of a low hemisphere of metal emerging from the uneven iron surface. “That way.” He pointed.
Off in the direction of the cabled gantries, a lopsided pyramid of metal lay low against the near horizon. Weak illumination spilled from a long gap in its side, a watery white glow barely visible at this distance. Tuvok had not noticed it on his initial survey of the landscape and wondered if it had been lost in the haze or perhaps only activated just now, in response to his transmission.
“Perhaps we are being extended an invitation,” said Dakal. He winced slightly as he spoke, clutching at his injured arm. “It could be a shelter or a communications nexus.”
“That would seem to be the logical deduction,” Tuvok set off walking across the scarred iron plain, and the others fell in behind him. He did not check the biomonitor on the cuff of his suit; there was no need to do so. He knew exactly how long it would be before his air grew thin, how long it would be before his team began to slow as the fatigue poisons in their bloodstreams accumulated, how long it would be before the ambient radiation began to damage them.
He hoped it would be long enough.
“Torvig?”
The Choblik didn’t hear her resolve into being. The same moment his internal