Enigma Ship by J. York (small books to read .TXT) 📕

Sonya grinned at him, looking rested and alert. He knew she hadn’t slept any more than he had. Where did that woman get her energy?

“Look alive, Lieutenant Commander, the boss is on the line.”

He glanced over at the wall-mounted viewscreen just in time to see the Starfleet logo vanish and be replaced by the image of Captain Scott. “Commander Gomez. Sorry I took so long to return your call. Meetings.” He grimaced, as though the one word explained everything. “What can I do for you?”

“Sorry to bother you, Captain, but our investigation into Enigma has turned up something that requires your expertise.”

Scotty brightened. “Well, why didn’t ye say so, lass? What have ye found?”

Duffy felt awake enough to dive in. “Captain, we’ve been reviewing the sensor logs from the Chinook and the freighter. The Chinook data hasn’t been terribly useful, but the freighter logs are a different matter. The quality is so bad we’ve had to filter and massage it a dozen different ways to get the resolution we needed, but we think we have something.”

“I’m transmitting a segment of the enhanced and restored visual record,” Gomez said.

Scott’s image on the screen was replaced by the visual playback. A space-suited figure floated in what seemed to be empty space. The suit was orange, an armored shell topped by a transparent bubble, with a bulky backpack studded with thruster nozzles, and a large toolpack attached to the belt. The man inside the helmet was humanoid and looked about thirty, perhaps younger, in human terms. But he was not human. His bright green skin made that clear.

Only when one looked closely was it apparent that something was just in front of the man, a discontinuity, like the edge of a soap bubble the size of a moon. He reached for the discontinuity and his hand stopped against the nearly invisible surface, like a mime touching the walls of a make-believe box. Then he reached into the pouch and pulled out an odd looking tool.

“Computer, freeze playback,” Gomez said. “Do you recognize the tool, Captain Scott?”

“Well, it’s no human manufacture, but I’d say it’s a magnetic probe o’ some kind.”

“Right,” said Duffy, “we think that’s exactly what it is. Probably Andorian from the looks of it.”

“Now, watch,” said Gomez, resuming the playback.

The suited man pressed the tip of the probe against the discontinuity, and twisted a control. The probe began to disappear inside, which was surprising, since, in this case, inside only looked like more empty space. But as it pierced the surface, it began to disappear. The man withdrew the tool, and adjusted the controls some more. The tip of the probe began to glow. He pressed it against Enigma again.

Suddenly, something flared, and a circular opening perhaps two meters across appeared around the tip of the probe. The man leaned forward, looking inside. Little of the interior could be seen, but there was light coming from inside. The man crawled through the opening and disappeared from view, leaving the floating probe in the middle of the opening.

After a slight delay, he reappeared, grabbed the probe and pulled it inside. The opening narrowed as he did, and he could be seen switching the probe off, at which point the opening vanished completely.

Captain Scott reappeared on the screen, nodding. “So y’think a magnetic probe can be used to get inside Enigma?”

“We hope so,” said Duffy. “But we want to understand how it works before we try it ourselves, and that’s why we wanted to talk to you about the magnetic probe.”

Scott looked puzzled. “What’s to tell? Do you not know all about magnetic probes?”

A sheepish look crossed Gomez’s face. “Sir, nobody in Starfleet has needed a magnetic probe in fifty years. We assume the freighter has some systems old enough or primitive enough to make one useful, but we’re just not sure.”

“Well then, lass, I’m nae sure if I should be flattered or insulted, but I can tell you all you need to know. In my day, we used them to work on the magnetic and force field antimatter containment. I once used one to save the Enterprise when we lost control of the antimatter flow.”

Gomez nodded. “The Kalandan Outpost incident. I’ve read about it in the texts.” She shuddered slightly. “The idea of manually shutting down a runaway antimatter drive using a hand tool seems—forgive me, sir—”

Scotty grinned. “Insane? Lass, I would have said the same thing, but it’s amazing what a motivated engineer will do to save his ship—as you should know, or have ye forgotten the Sentinel so soon?”

Duffy had to hide a grin of his own at Gomez’s abashed look. She had, after all, pulled several stunts during the Dominion War during her time serving as chief engineer of the U.S.S. Sentinel. “In any case,” he said, “that’s why we called you. This thing was designed for working on magnetic containment, yet somehow it opened an iris in a holographic force field.”

Scotty looked surprised. “A hologram, you say?”

“We don’t know what’s inside Enigma yet, but we’re pretty sure the outside is a holographic projection overlaying a regenerative shield system. We’ve never seen anything like it.”

“We knew Enigma wasn’t truly cloaked,” said Gomez. “Cloaking devices generally bend or transfer electromagnetic radiation around or through a ship. Enigma isn’t that well hidden, if you know where to look and look closely enough in the right way. I don’t think it’s meant to sneak up on people—more like camouflage, a system designed to allow it to go unnoticed in the vastness of space. When we see ‘through’ Enigma, we’re actually seeing a holographic representation of what the stars on the other side look like, not the stars themselves. And the really curious thing is that, while Enigma isn’t truly invisible, it’s equally difficult to see in most every wavelength and form of energy known. We’ve tried everything from gravitons to tachyons. There could be thousands of Enigmas wandering through our space, and pretty much the only way we’d ever discover