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

What if, instead of the real away team, Enigma gave them back only holographic duplicates? Then they might not be able to save anybody at all.

*     *     *

Stevens stepped out of the turbolift and onto the da Vinci‘s bridge.

Gold looked at him curiously.

“Nothing more I could do down there, Captain. I figured this would be the place to watch the show. In fact”—he glanced at the tactical station—“I was wondering if I could push the button?”

Gold nodded. “Be my guest.”

McAllan moved out of the way to allow Stevens access.

“Just one thing, Stevens.”

“Sir?”

“Don’t miss.”

*     *     *

Duffy and Omthon stopped just outside the transporter room, and Duffy groaned. “Not now!”

The ball of light hovered just outside the door, then shaped itself back into the form of the Bolian officer.

“Listen to me,” said Duffy, “your ship is in danger. You have to listen to me.”

The Bolian looked annoyed. “You disrupt the simulation. You must be isolated.”

*     *     *

“Captain,” said Lincoln‘s conn officer, “we’re being hailed. A ship is matching course with us.”

“On screen.”

Gomez looked up and gasped. She’d seen the ship before, but only as a drawing on a padd. It was Duffy’s S.C.E. ship.

“They’re the U.S.S. Roebling,” reported the ops officer. “Sir, they’re asking us to beam over a Commander Gomez, a Lt. Commander Duffy, and Crewperson P8 Blue.”

Gomez blinked. Roebling.

She remembered the name from her engineering history class. A nineteenth-century engineering family back on Earth. If memory served, they designed and built the Brooklyn Bridge. Duffy had mentioned visiting the Brooklyn Bridge to her once.

Enigma had to be plucking things from Duffy’s mind, only they didn’t realize this ship was real only to him.

“Captain,” said Gomez firmly, “that is not a Federation ship; it’s an alien imposter.”

“Captain,” said the ops officer, “all their Federation identity codes verify.”

“Check your database. You’ll find no U.S.S. Roebling listed, nor will you find any ship matching that configuration. Look at it! It’s a poor copy of a Norway-class vessel,” she added with a mental apology to Duffy.

Newport looked at her. He nodded. “What should we do?”

“I recommend evasive action. Fire on it if you have to, but don’t let it delay us getting to Starbase 12.”

*     *     *

As abruptly as he’d appeared, the false Bolian was gone. Duffy was surprised he hadn’t been transported elsewhere, but he somehow didn’t think it was over.

As they entered the transporter room, the deck shuddered slightly. Duffy immediately know what had happened.

“That was a torpedo launch! What is blazes is going on up there?”

Roth was at the transporter console. Duffy slid in beside him. “We’re still not in transporter range.” He glanced at the sensor display, then did a double take. “There’s another ship registering out there.”

Omthon leaned closer to see. “Do you recognize it?”

“Oh yeah,” said Duffy, feeling another torpedo fire, “I recognize it. And I think Commander Gomez does too.”

*     *     *

“Torpedo away,” said Stevens. He watched the torpedo streak toward Enigma, heading straight for its heart. But the torpedo wasn’t designed to penetrate it, or even touch it.

It would explode just short of Enigma’s surface, and a carefully tuned magnetic plasma burst would shred Enigma’s holograms like confetti.

*     *     *

Duffy watched the screen anxiously. “The Roebling is trying to get multiple transporter locks on us, probably to beam the three of us troublemakers off the ship, but they can’t do it while our shields are up.”

“We’re almost to Starbase 12,” said Roth, his fingers flexing nervously over the console.

Omthon looked at Duffy. “They’ll have to drop shields to beam the Chinook people on board. We’ve got a problem.”

“What,” said Duffy sarcastically, “another one?”

*     *     *

P8 watched the sliding temperature scale on the wall console, her front leg hovering over the control. Just a little more. A little more. Now.

*     *     *

Soloman watched the torpedo sail past his module, and he did not hesitate to follow as it approached Enigma. Bynars did not have the excessive sensitivity to glare that humans had, so he had instructed the viewport not to polarize, as he would still be able to see everything.

Then it happened.

The torpedo exploded into an expanding ball of yellow plasma that struck Enigma. The force fields shimmered with arcs of energy, and the holograms began to flicker. At last, Enigma would be revealed.

“Good luck, my friends,” said Soloman, surprised at his words, especially given that there was nobody there to hear.

*     *     *

Stevens watched the tactical console in disbelief. “Captain, there’s a message coming from inside Enigma. It’s from Commander Gomez. It says—” His gut suddenly knotted, and misery crept into his voice. “It says, ‘Life or death, do not disrupt Enigma. Do not fire on Enigma.’”

*     *     *

“Something’s happening,” said Omthon, looking at the exterior view on a wall-mounted viewscreen. As he watched, the floating top that was Starbase 12 flickered, as did the Roebling flying close formation with them, the blue planet in the background, and the very sky itself.

“We’re too late,” said Roth, his face turning pale.

Duffy pushed him aside, scanning frantically for the combadges he knew would be there. For a moment, there were thousands, and then there were only three. “I’ve got a lock! Energizing!”

Three stunned Starfleet crewmen materialized on the transporter pad, but Duffy knew it wasn’t enough.

“Great Emerald gods,” said Omthon, staring at the screen, dumbstruck. “There must be millions of them, and they don’t have a chance.”

Chapter11

Soloman’s eyes widened. Something was wrong.

As the holograms faded, there should have been a ship, a hull, but there was only space, and that space was not empty.

There was a vast cloud: unidentifiable pieces of machinery, most no bigger than his module. A few ships, most of them looking abandoned and derelict, some eroded as though by long corrosion.

But mostly there were bodies, beings, people flailing about, horrified as they found themselves dumped, unprotected, into space.

Soloman reacted instinctively. He saw a being near him, six-legged, pink-skinned, huge blue eyes that shined with both terror and intelligence.

He activated the thrusters, simultaneously extending a manipulator arm from