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

“Yes, Commander. Firing main thruster.”

Duffy felt a slight push down onto the footrests, and the module began to accelerate away from the da Vinci. The ship grew slightly smaller for several minutes, until they rolled over, and the module braked to a stop.

“Gomez to Stevens, we’re standing by at a safe distance.”

“Stand by, we’re almost ready to launch.”

“Explain to me again,” said Pattie, “what this ‘X-ray’ is?’”

“Sure,” said Duffy. “It’s an internal imaging technique we used to use on Earth. Radiation was directed through a solid object onto some kind of sensitive receptor or film that could create a shadow image. It was used to test metals for cracks, even image people for medical purposes.”

“Bombarding living beings with radiation just to examine their insides? My people never developed such a thing.”

Duffy chuckled. “Not likely you would. All your bones are on the outside where you can just look at them. Anyway, Doc Lense mentioned this to me, and that gave me the idea on how to take a peek inside. See, the problem is that Enigma’s broad-spectrum holograms fool all our sensors. They seem to know when they’re being scanned and increase their resolution. The closer we look, the more realistic their holograms. Our sensors are too good. We hope if we take a big, crude, fast, shadow picture of Enigma, it will overwhelm their ability to cloak themselves. Instead of radiation, though, we’ll use a torpedo modified to produce an intense burst of neutrinos, and we’ve modified our deflector dish to be the image pickup.”

Duffy looked up as he spoke and saw the port over the da Vinci‘s forward torpedo launch slide open. “They’re getting ready to fire.”

“Stand by,” Stevens’s voice came through his speakers. “Fire torpedo on my mark.” A pause. “Mark.”

A bright object, the torpedo all but hidden behind its own thruster flare, shot from the tube, running in a straight line only long enough to clear the ship, then curving around the bulk of Enigma. They couldn’t see the hidden ship, but the curve of the torpedo’s course, for the first time, gave them a sense of its size. Duffy found himself whistling.

Intellectually, he had known it was big, but that was much different than having a feel for the thing. It reminded him of the time he’d first walked the wooden deck of the restored Brooklyn Bridge in New York, back on Earth, and imagined building those stone towers using nothing but steam and muscle. Then, as now, Duffy had suddenly felt very small.

He was surprised that he could tell when the torpedo crossed Enigma’s “horizon” and continued around its back side. At that point, something about the torpedo looked different in a way he couldn’t define. Perhaps the speed and brightness of the torpedo were already overwhelming Enigma’s holograms in some subtle way that the eye, an amazingly sophisticated instrument in its own right, could detect.

Then came the explosion.

There was no sound, of course, and his helmet visor automatically compensated for the glare. But the flash was brief, and his visor almost instantly reverted to a normal view. In that moment, he could swear he saw the stars behind Enigma shimmer slightly, as though the hologram had momentarily become unstable. Then it was gone, and Enigma was hidden in its cloak of secrecy. Almost.

“Away team,” said Stevens, “we’ve got good data on the dish over here. We’re analyzing it right now. Getting some gross readings. There’s a lot of Starfleet-issue duranium alloy in there, consistent with the mass of the Lincoln. “

Duffy felt a tightness in his chest. Of course the duranium was in there, but in what form? The seconds ticked by.

“Away team, we’re—She’s intact! The Lincoln‘s still in one piece!” In the background audio, Duffy could hear cheers. He surprised himself by letting out a whoop and pumping his fist at the stars. He surprised himself even more when he leaned over and gave Gomez an awkward hug. More surprising yet, she hugged back, laughing all the while.

“What,” said Pattie, a puzzled tone in her voice, “was all that about?”

“Elation,” said Soloman. “A release of accumulated emotional tension. A human thing, perhaps, but I felt some of it myself. Our comrades are quite possibly alive.”

P8’s pickup transmitted an odd, tinkling sound. “Our orders were always to proceed on that assumption.”

“Sorry, Pattie,” said Duffy. “Humans can’t just be ordered to be optimistic. There’s hope, and there’s justified hope, and most of the crew just crossed from the former to the latter.”

“Gold to away team.”

Duffy was surprised to hear the captain’s voice. He quickly let go of Gomez’s waist and tried to put himself back into professional mode.

“You heard the man,” the captain continued. “If there was ever a doubt, this is now definitely a rescue mission. Get us inside.”

“Aye, sir,” responded Gomez. “Soloman, take us in.”

Chapter7

Dr. Lense leaned over Stevens’s shoulder and stared at the console. “How much do you trust this data?”

Stevens shrugged. “I’m guessing maybe seventy percent accuracy. All our information is inferred, and Enigma was trying to mask our pulse.”

On a viewscreen to Stevens’s right, a tall, nervous-looking officer with a high forehead looked on. Lense understood that his name was Barclay, and he was some kind of expert on holotechnology.

Barclay shook his head in wonder. “A neutrino hologram. I—I wouldn’t even have thought it was possible.”

Stevens looked up at the screen and smiled wryly. “They haven’t seen anything like this in the Delta Quadrant, Lieutenant?”

“Voyager has encountered some amazing things. But nothing like this.”

“So you’re saying Enigma represents a more advanced technology than ours?” Stevens said.

Barclay seemed hesitant to commit. “In some ways, but there’s no sign of warp drive. You’re familiar with Principles of Parallel Technologies?”

Stevens nodded. “It’s already come up several times since this mission started. You think this is exception that proves the rule?”

Barclay’s eyebrows lifted. “Technically, the exception can never prove the rule, but it’s possible this is an exception of some sort. Waldport thought