The Demon Book 1 Read online

  “Lights on,” he finally managed and blinked rapidly several times as his quarters flooded with light. Though not large by any stretch of the imagination—he could cross corner to corner in about six quick strides, provided he didn’t bump into his small desk or the bed—its familiarity nonetheless began to calm his nerves.

  Glancing at the chronometer, he saw that its uncaring surface displayed 0300 hours; he’d only been asleep an hour.

  Slipping his legs out from under the covers, Gold sat on the edge and rubbed both hands vigorously across his face, as though the effort would scrub away the last vestiges of the nightmare. He stopped when he realized that it still felt as though someone else were rubbing half his face. They’d told him that the hand replacement was almost a perfect match and that his mind and body would quickly come to accept it as his own. Yet, months later, on mornings like these, he could still tell. Holding out his hands, he saw they were still shaking.

  “Gevalt,” he said and slowly stood up. His wife Rachel might need multiple cups of tea, but once he was up, there was no going back for hours.

  After a quick shower and shave he returned fully dressed and sat at his desk. “Viewscreen on,” he said, and perused crew reports and duty rosters for the coming days on the small desk-mounted console. He continued on for some minutes before the realization struck that he was hiding from his nightmare. With disgust he turned off the screen and faced what had awakened him so early; he’d never backed away from the truth and he was not about to start now.

  His granddaughter was just fine. There simply was no reason to believe otherwise. For a moment he pondered the possibility of actually contacting Rachel back on Earth, but then realized the ludicrousness of such an act. He couldn’t help but smile at the thought of the ribbing his wife would give him for such a call. For a rabbi, Rachel had a mean streak in her. Better to face a Breen armada than years of that kind of torture, regardless of its good-natured fun.

  But if Esther had been hurt…or was sick…No. Rachel would contact him at once.

  A chime sounded, interrupting his debate. “Gomez to Gold.”

  Clearing his voice with a rusty cough, he put on his captain’s voice and tapped his combadge. “Gold here. What’s up, Gomez?”

  “Sir, we have a distress call.”

  “I’m on my way,” he said.

  Looked like there was something to be doing after all.

  Both Gomez and Tev were on the bridge when Gold arrived; as usual, his best officers were already on the case.

  “What do we have, Gomez?” he asked before he’d even finished stepping onto the bridge.

  Gomez punched up the signal and let it do the talking for her.

  Static. Then, “We are trapped inside the Demon. We are running low on resources. Help us.”

  “The Demon.” Gold tapped a finger against his chin. “Nebula? Plasma storm?”

  Sonya glanced at Tev, then admitted something that was obviously difficult for the both of them. “We don’t know.”

  “Well, it’s a distress call. Why aren’t we moving?” Another captain might already be reprimanding his crew for negligence, but he’d come too far and been through too much with the remaining crew after Galvan VI not to trust their judgment. Especially Gomez. If they weren’t moving yet, she had a good reason.

  “Because there is some doubt about its validity. It has a quantum flux that’s right off the charts.”

  As usual, he waited for Gomez to continue; he knew when she had something further she wanted to say, but had not yet figured out how best to present it to a nonengineer. He stifled a yawn that threatened to crack his composure; he hid it behind a scratch of the nose and a quick glance around the bridge at beta shift’s watch officers, who all looked calm.

  He had a feeling that would change in a hurry.

  Like he’d had a feeling that his granddaughter was in trouble?

  “There’s a resonating…no, more like a multiphase gradient to the signal that is causing the computer to determine that the signal, well…is about ninety-three years old…give or take a few months.”

  “Why is that so unusual?” Even in a quadrant filled with almost real-time subspace communications, there were still enough prewarp sentient races out there to have standard radio signals (some of which were distress calls) still crisscrossing the void with regularity.

  “Because it’s a subspace signal,” Tev said with his usual bluntness.

  Now that was unusual. Subspace made for almost real-time space communications. To discover one that the computer actually tagged as being a century old…didn’t make much sense at all. He had a vague recollection of a course in the Academy where the professor had droned on and on about the theory of a subspace signal retaining its cohesion and field strength in a self-renewing loop that would allow it to travel across quadrants, if not across the entire disc of the galaxy.

  Could they have stumbled across such a signal, originally from an unimaginable distance away at the outer rim of the farthest side of the Milky Way?

  As he continued to look at Gomez, he realized she had something more to say and was waiting for him to assimilate the first bit of news. He was never sure whether this habit of hers annoyed him or amused him.

  He quirked an eyebrow. “What’s the rest of it?”

  “The signal degradation puts the point of origin at only eighteen light-years away.” She glanced down at the screen as though to verify the information once more.

  “Even I know that doesn’t make any sense, Gomez.” He moved to his chair and immediately began to warm up to the problem. “What do we know about the region of space around the point of origin?”

  “The sector is designated 221-H. It is close to the recently fallen Thallonian Empire,” Tev spoke up as though the question had been cast for his ears alone. Gold saw a flicker of annoyance wash across Gomez’s features and vanish as quickly. Tev, while continuing to speak, was not even looking in their direction. “It is a region of space the Federation has not been welcome in for very long. I believe there are now two Federation starships assigned to the area.”

  “The Excalibur and Trident,” Gold said. “And they’re hip-deep in local politics. Anything else?”

  “Tellar dispatched a science vessel toward this sector to study astronomical anomalies, which is as detailed as the Starfleet report gets on the subject. But they will not arrive on station for another six months or more.”

  “So we know virtually nothing about this sector. No Federation outposts or colonies, and the region’s littered with astronomical anomalies that have so far defied the Federation’s ability to define. Would that sum it up, Tev?”

  “That is correct, sir. Until the Tellarite vessel arrives.”

  If one thought about it in the right light, such comments were almost amusing. Gold glanced at Gomez, and saw that she hadn’t found this new way of thinking yet.

  “What about the message itself? What language did it arrive in?”

  “The language banks mark it as Resaurian.” Tev shrugged. “There are no immediate references available in the computer’s archives.”

  “Well, regardless, it’s a distress signal and we’re obligated to respond. Even if we end up being one hundred years too late.”

  “Nintey-three,” Tev reminded him.

  Gold swiveled his chair toward the Tellarite. “Yes, of course.” He swiveled back. “Rusconi, set a course for that destination point, maximum warp.”

  The conn officer answered with a professional, “Yes, Captain.” She adjusted their course with efficient movements. Gold took a moment to glance out the forward viewscreen. Stars chased themselves through the slipstream wash. He hoped he never tired of the beauty of warp speed.

  He turned back toward Gomez but as usual, she was already ahead of him.

  “I’ve already got my people working. Carol and Bart are digging into the computer, looking for any files related to the Resaurians. Fabian has a theory that the signal itself may have been caught
in a subspace-generated stasis field that only recently ruptured, allowing the signal to continue. I’m not so sure that is the case.” She glanced at Tev, almost as though waiting for him to interrupt. “The quantum degradation is simply wrong for…um…”

  Gold knew that he was becoming very adept at appearing to be interested in the technobabble of his engineers, but with Gomez, he just couldn’t seem to fool her no matter how often he tried.

  “Sorry Captain,” she interrupted herself with a slight shake of her head. “We’ll get right to work, and see what answers we can pull in for you before we arrive.”

  “Thank you, Gomez.”

  With that, she departed with Tev in tow and Gold moved with purpose. He needed to inform Starfleet that they’d be delayed in their current mission.

  Chapter

  4

  Sonya shook her head. Amazing the difference only a few hours can make.

  Rather than the quiet annoyance of sharing beta shift with Tev, the da Vinci’s bridge was now full of activity and energy. Alpha crew, alerted to the situation, had taken over early. Domenica Corsi stood guard over security, pulling down files on every known race from this corner of the Alpha Quadrant, searching for threats and discussing quietly with her deputy chief Vance Hawkins, Rennan Konya, and the tactical officer, Anthony Shabalala. Songmin Wong helmed the ship, and Susan Haznedl sat next to him at ops. They were still engaged in their mental game of tri-D chess, whispering moves back and forth when they assumed Captain Gold wasn’t listening.

  At least they were accomplishing something.

  Sonya and her team had spent several hours trying to pull additional information out of the signal, all to no avail. The best they’d managed was to clean up the audio, and being able to drop the transient intermodulation distortion to zero was no consolation.

  Her one bright spot should have come with seeing Tev just as frustrated, but he never wavered. Tellarites supposedly wore their emotions on their sleeves, but either she simply couldn’t register his agitation or he hid it well. He was still certain that he would figure it out before they arrived (and likely before anyone else). It wore very thin on Sonya.

  Fortunately, she finally had something new to report. “I’m starting to measure appreciable gravimetric waves.” She quickly ran through several algorithmic models to verify what she already knew. “They are centered on the signal’s origin.”

  Gold nodded, glanced at Tev. “Astronomical anomalies.”

  Or something. Sonya glanced again at a side monitor and was surprised at her findings. She’d allowed the computer to continue running models of what they might find, but the primary screen was displaying an increase in gravimetric waves that dwarfed her models; her parameters had simply been too small. They were increasing now at an exponential rate!

  “Captain, we may have—”

  She was interrupted by a severe jolt as the da Vinci suddenly dropped out of warp, unscheduled. Crew members grabbed for armrests, for the edge of panels, as the inertial dampers failed. Sonya caught herself against the command pit railing. She saw Anthony Shabalala sit back with a gash bleeding over his right eye.

  Gold had stuck to the captain’s chair as if strapped in. Now he was up, moving fast, standing over his conn officer. “Wong, what just happened?”

  The conn officer was already bent over his panel, fingers flying over the interface. “No idea. One moment we’re fine, and the next we’re at impulse.”

  Sonya bounced back to her station. “We hit a gravity well. Those gravimetric waves were merely on the leading edge of it.” She chewed her lower lip, trying to make sense of the data streaming across her viewer. The captain was waiting on her. “Maybe a rogue planet, or a cosmic superstring…” Something with enough gravity to drag them out of warp.

  “Damage report?” Gold asked, stabbing a direct look back to Shabalala as the ship trembled again.

  The tactical officer shook his head. “Nothing major, Captain. Reports of minor injuries so far.”

  “Distance to signal origin?”

  Haznedl checked sensors. “Estimated one hundred fifty million kilometers, approaching at one-quarter impulse.”

  “Captain.” Nancy Conlon interrupted from engineering. “Warp drive has been knocked offline. I’m reading severe gravimetric wave buildup. It’s interfering with the containment field.”

  “Looks like we’ve found your astronomical anomaly, Tev.” When no response was forthcoming, Sonya looked over to find Tev still as a statue, his head barely moving as he glanced between the viewscreen and his own tricorder. She wondered why he’d use a tricorder instead of simply tapping into the da Vinci’s sensors through another work station.

  “Lieutenant Conlon.” Tev lowered his tricorder, typed some input. “We appear to be approaching some type of anomaly that is emanating massive gravimetric waves. Their concentration is beyond the scope of what we originally believed as we entered the region.”

  He didn’t look in her direction, but Sonya still felt the sting of a reprimand. Who said Tellarites can’t be subtle? She redoubled her efforts and began running additional simulations, expanding her parameters.

  “When will you have warp drive back online?” Gold asked Conlon.

  “I’m not sure, Captain. A warp containment field can act pretty crazy around gravimetric waves of sufficient force. I’ll give you an update in an hour, but the best course of action would be to get us away from the problem.”

  “That is not a possibility yet, Conlon. I’ll let you know as soon as I can comply with that request.” A slight tone of humor crept into the captain’s voice.

  “I’m sure you will, sir. Engineering out.”

  Sonya clenched her fists as the simulation she ran failed to match what they were experiencing. Perhaps she was simply looking at it wrong. She’d increased her parameters significantly but that didn’t have the effect she was looking for either.

  Start at the basics. She began poring over the readings coming in. The gravimetric waves were increasing. Right. Was anything else increasing? Background radiation? Any neutrino spikes? What wasn’t she seeing?

  Suddenly she realized why she was clenching her fists. She took a deep breath and called out, “Tev, what have you got?”

  She might as well have been talking to the wall. He continued to input data into his tricorder.

  “Tev!” she called in as close to a shout as she’d had to use with any subordinate in years. Gold glanced sharply in her direction, and Sonya’s ears burned.

  Tev finally looked over. “Yes, Commander?” he asked, a placid look on his gruff face.

  She gritted her teeth. Did he truly not hear her before, or was he just now willing to listen? She unclenched her fists slowly. She would make this work.

  “What have you got?” She began fresh, trying to immerse herself fully into the problem, leaving behind, for now, any problems with Tev. “I’ve been running simulations and they simply aren’t generating what we’re seeing. We should expect to see energy level increases across the board with this much gravimetric force washing through.”

  “Commander, there is no increase elsewhere.” He paused for a moment, as though waiting for an answer. Then he shrugged. “There is a significant decrease, however.”

  “What?” she asked, startled that she had not delved into that possibility.

  Tev stepped over to her station and passed his tricorder to her. She noticed immediately that it was not standard issue, but had been altered subtly; it operated as a remote station, tapped directly into the full power of the da Vinci’s sensors. Impressive work, actually.

  “The ambient energy level in the entire region is draining off. There’s also a spectral distortion that we’ve just picked up, centered on the signal’s point of origin.”

  Sonya finally understood. Of course her simulations were failing. Regardless of how many times she’d increased the parameters, they’d not be increased enough. Not by a long shot.

  “Captain,” she said, wond
ering why Tev had not spoken up as he’d obviously figured it out before she had. She made a quick decision; it may not matter to Tev in the slightest, but it mattered to her. “Sir, Tev’s figured out what we’re up against.”

  “Of course,” Tev said, as though answering her.

  She fought against grinding her teeth. She’d given it to him and he’d pushed it in her face. Sonya tried to relax. Just his way. Captain’s waiting.

  “Looks like the signal is originating from a black hole.”

  Chapter

  5

  The da Vinci rocked slightly, buffeted by gravimetric forces, as Mor glasch Tev stomped into the briefing room. He was aware of every pair of eyes that glanced at him in that uncertain way humans (and so many humanoid races) used to prejudge what they did not understand. They were already making assumptions that would never hold up under direct evidence. Relying on prejudice over scientific method.

  Carol Abramowitz glanced back toward the door. “Glad you could make it, Tev.”

  Bartholomew Faulwell, sitting next to the cultural specialist, eating from a pile of individually wrapped candies, smiled. On the other side of the long table the Nasat, P8 Blue, chittered in her way of approximating human laughter.

  He did not bother to consult a chronometer. “I am four minutes early,” he stated clearly. Abramowitz flushed, and shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

  Captain Gold half rose from his chair at the table’s head. “It’s a figure of speech, reserved for when someone is late, or is the last to arrive.”

  Tev snuffled at the air, the Tellarite equivalent of a sigh. “I shall make a note of that, Captain.”

  “Please do. No need to get your back up over a simple pleasantry.”

  His back wasn’t up over anything. He had just said that he would try harder, hadn’t he? He would not even complain that Fabian Stevens had taken Tev’s seat at the left hand of Sonya Gomez. He would save instruction for later, when he could speak with Stevens alone. He grabbed the empty chair in between Faulwell and Chief of Security Corsi.