Chapter Seven
Barely ten minutes had passed, but Leral now understood why the Commander paced all the time.
She looked back at her hours on the Hiv’laposh’s bridge, many of which had been spent watching La’ra march back and forth across the control center like a giant automaton. In reflection, his most lengthy, most ardent spells of pacing where when he’d given every order he could, set specialists on whatever task was needed, and then was forced to stand and wait for the results of his decisions. Pacing was a logical vent for such frustration, she decided. She wasn’t indulging in it herself. Instead, she habitually scanned the sop’nagh, or checked her comm circuits, or any little thing that would distract her.
K’tal, nearby, still seethed. She realized that he was probably going through the same thing. Worse, he’d had no orders to give. His skills had not been needed.
She thought about speaking to him, but she’d noted the harsh glares he kept sending her and decided that such an effort wouldn’t be fruitful.
“We have a partial map of it’s brain functions, Lieutenant.” Meran announced.
“Let me see.” She ordered. Meran offered his tricorder. She took it.
"There's large areas..."
"...with no neural activity, yes, Lieutenant." Meran frowned. "I couldn't find what was wrong with them until I did a very intensive microbe scan. The tissue in those areas is heavily infected."
"Infected?"
"Yes. It picked up a simple disease somehow and it's spread enough that it's inhibiting functions."
Leral nodded. They were fortunate the warp systems hadn't been affected or they might've met a spectacular demise. Of course if things had degraded to that level, the sop'nagh would've probably destroyed itself long ago.
"The highest levels of activity are there..." Meran pointed at the tricorder's display. "...and there. Both have direct links to the warp system. If we have to use the explosive, that would be the best area.”
“There’s a problem with that, Lieutenant.” Rinbar broke in. She looked at him.
“What we assume is the main power feed runs through close to those areas.”
“Can you destroy the areas without affecting it?”
“I think so. I’ll need to retool some of my shaped charges. I…” The demolition man paused. “…as you said, I’ve never had to blow up organic material before. I’ll be guessing about the yield needed and how much force might be transferred.”
“But you think you can do it?”
“Yes.” He smiled, suddenly. “I may have a little leeway. The main power feed seems like it’s heavily reinforced.”
“Go ahead and prepare your explosives. We may as well be prepared.”
“Yes, Lieutenant.” He stepped away, manhandling his pack off his back and opening it. He didn’t seem to think about how close his teammates were when he began resetting three of his charges. Logically, there was no chance of an accidental detonation – the detonators weren’t even in -- but Leral found herself resisting the urge to step away.
Meran glanced nervously at Rinbar, but said nothing.
“There’s…something else, Lieutenant.” He said after a moment. She prompted him to continue.
“It seems like the microbe responsible for the sop’nagh’s…illness is present throughout it’s entire brain structure. The areas most affect just seem to be the origin points.”
“So eventually the whole thing will be nonfunctional?”
“Yes. It’s occurred to me that we might be looking at the reason for most sop’nagh’s behavior.”
“Inhbiited brain functions?” She queried. “Wouldn’t it be unusual for the same disease to be present in all of them?”
“Not if whoever built it suffered continually from it, like the Terrans from their cold, or our brach. And I think that’s the case.”
Leral realized suddenly that Meran had been holding back information, waiting to present the true selling point of his theory until the most dramatically appropriate moment. It was a common habit among science officers, at least until impatient commanders tossed them into an agonizer booth. She’d learned not to do it, but there’d been a couple of times on the Hiv’laposh when she’d indulged herself, feeding the Commander or the First tidbits until the real meal came along. She had never done it in a crisis, but valued the times she allowed herself the indulgence.
She let Meran continue.
“I’ve found traces of some kind of chemical in the cell structure. It’s a medicine of some kind…it directly counteracts the spread of the microbe.”
“So someone has been treating it?”
“Yes, Lieutenant, but the chemical seems a bit…stale…it’s old, I think. The sop’nagh has not been treated in some time. Judging by the readings, it may have been centuries.”
Leral pondered that.
“Whoever built them no longer maintains them.” She theorized. “Perhaps their builders are extinct.”
“It’s storing cargo, Lieutenant. It has to be taking it somewhere. If Huk gets into the computer, perhaps we can find out where.”
“If she doesn’t, we can extrapolate its course.” She advised.
Meran smiled. “Yes, I suppose that would work too.”
“I’ll check on her progress, though.” Leral offered. She stepped toward the console.
"Language is pretty complex, Lieutenant." Huk declared. "But I know what this thing is."
The younger scientist indicated the headset that had emerged.
"Neural interface, I think. You put it on your head and you can manage the software mentally."
"How did you figure that out without the language?"
"Because of this." Huk said, and pressed a key. A section of the control panel suddenly changed, displaying a crude humanoid figure affixing the headset to it's temples. Short bits of unknown letters accompanying the diagram, with some instructional arrows to make things clearer.
"That text is in...something like basic computer code. I think this is what Terrans call a 'user friendly' interface."
"Yes..." Leral frowned. What sort of people had the sop'nagh's makers sent to maintain the thing.
"I was waiting for your permission to try it, Lieutenant."
Leral regarded her younger teammate. "We have no idea if this could have any harmful effects."
Huk nodded. "It seems to be the primary interface, Lieutenant. I suspect if we want into the system, we'll have to use it."
Leral frowned more deeply. Blowing up the sop'nagh's brain would be chancy, in her opinion. A sudden loss of control could be catostrophic in more ways than she could imagine without an hour or so of spare time...especially given the proximity of the main power relay. Rinbar seemed confident, and he knew his job...but explosions were unpredictable. Leral did not like variables she could not account for.
"Are there any special instructions?" She asked Huk.
"No, Lieutenant."
"All right. Please stand back." To her side she saw K'tal look up. Whether the stunned expression on his face was amazement or contempt she couldn't discern.
"Lieutenant..." Huk began.
"No." Leral responded. "My mission, my responsibility."
The younger woman blinked and looked disapproving, but she stepped back. Leral took the headset and placed the padded ends on her temples.
There was a buzzing, a slight pain in her head. Nothing else happened. She waited.
Still nothing. A thought occured.
"Meran." She called out. "Scan this device and tell me which section of the thing's brain it's connected to."
Meran complied.
"One of the decayed areas, Lieutenant."
She nodded. The thing could not hear her. She removed the headset.
"I think that leaves the explosives." She muttered. He stomach knotted. She wasn't afraid of death, but there were so many ways...being crushed to jelly after an inertial compensator failing was not the way she wished to reach Sto'vo'kor.
"Actually, Lieutenant, I could cure it." Meran announced.
Huk gazed at her fellow scientist incredulously. K'tal glowered. Rinbar's eyes widened.
"Explain." Leral ordered.
"Like I said, the disease is simple...it's very similar to Terran athlete's foot. I could probably administer an invasive counter-agent. I have something suitable in the medical kit."
The Lieutenant considered. It'd probably take a lot of medicine to cleanse the sop'nagh's brain of it's malady, but then...
"Invasive counter-agent?"
"Yes. We have several. The microbe in the tissue is a fungus, and there's no beneficial organisms of that type present. A fungal counter-agent would devour the disease, then destroy itself. No guarantee the system would become functional, however."
Leral grinned. Medicine was not her speciality, but she remembered something about such materials. Klingon doctors had long been obsessed with the idea of sending their own hunters after their microscopic enemies rather than trying to drown them in chemicals as toxic to the patient as to the germ. They'd found success a few decades back.
It could work, she decided. There was a chance it could cause a failure as catastrophic as the one she feared from an explosion, but it seemed less absolute to her. If the sop'nagh's brain functions survived the dose, but couldn't restore itself, they could still blast it to bits.
"Let's try it." She ordered.
“Are you insane?” K’tal spat.
Leral turned towards the Marine. He stood, his glower now a fully, unrestrained scowl, his hands at his sides in what Leral assumed was a defensive posture.
“No.” She replied. Her eyes were slits.
“You seek to heal this monstrosity? Despite the danger we know it presents and when a simple block of plastic explosive would free us?”
“An explosion is irrevocable. This has a better chance of leaving us with another option.”
“No.” He snarled. “Your judgment is in question. Only a fool would…”
“I am not a fool.” She declared. Huk and Meran had edged away from her, though they stood in positions of support. Rinbar merely looked confused. “And the order is final.”
“No. It is not.” His fingers slid toward his d’ktagh. “I am the next in the chain of command. It is my duty to…replace you if you become irrational. Which you have.”
“I challenge you for leadership.”
Topic: The Miners of the Stars (Read 31965 times)