Work Text:
Stardate 2233.06
Ballard's Star, K Sector
Somewhere near the Klingon Border, one-point-five periods out of Deep Space K-7
Surak of Vulcan had once observed that one man alone could not summon the future, but through thoughtful action he could still affect the present. With all due respect to his esteemed colleagues on ShiKahr and elsewhere, perhaps the ancient logician and his adherents, in distilling his genius into catechism, had failed to account for ambition; for they had overlooked that every revolution, in matters cultural or scientific, had begun with one man of extraordinary vision. Privately, Richard Daystrom liked to consider himself such a man - and someday, he'd have the Zee-Magnees Prize to prove it.
Such men were rare, he knew; highly prized, equally envied and resented. The Federation, and the field of computing at large, had already been left the better for his gifts - and the fruit of his intellect, duotronics, was still but a seed seeking fertile soil to grow. Starfleet's Robert April had seen its potential where the Science Council bursars had not; it had come as a surprise when the man had beamed directly into his office without an appointment, but also a relief. Here at last was another visionary - one who had seen firsthand the conditions in which spacemen lived and died in space, and seen that they must be improved. April had outlined his plan; Daystrom had accepted the partnership. And as if two were not already enough, out of the Cochrane Institute on Proxima had come the engineer Laurence Marvick, his theoretical warp seven engine itching to spring free from the drafting table.
One man of vision had produced modern Vulcan; the Stellar Service was now blessed with three.
Imagine what they could accomplish, combining their talents - what they could accomplish, if they only worked together - if only Marvick would quit rearranging his circuits to minimize computer tie-in, and if only April would get serious and twist Appropriations' arms for more budget than the change under the Presidio couch cushions, and if only these draftsmen from Chang Design Cooperative would quit spoiling all their clean displacement calculations with neo-googie artifice - if only all these blind, incompetent fools would quit trying his patience long enough for him to accomplish —
"Whoever is tapping the pencil: if you value your life, please stop," he snapped.
Across the aisle, Marvick tutted. "There's only three of us in here, Dick, and Bob's driving."
"That's 'Doctor'."
"I know your name and you know mine. Use it."
"Don't make me turn this car around, gentlemen," Captain April said from the pilot's seat.
Daystrom glared before staring straight ahead; Marvick rolled his eyes and began doodling an unflattering portrait of the doctor as a primitive robot beside one of the energy matrix diagrams on his clipboard. But the offending tapping had ceased. The point was Daystrom's.
It was replaced by a crinkly rustling that quickly grew obnoxious - and by a hand coming into view, offering him a packet of colorful somethings.
"Jelly beans?"
"… No, thank you. 'Larry'."
The engineer shrugged and tipped his in-flight snack all as one into his waiting mouth. Somehow, he did even this obnoxiously. Point Marvick.
Daystrom didn't remember when or why the friction had started - perhaps a few minor social faux pas here and there, the usual clash of personalities, nothing that would prevent any respectable from working together - but over time, like the drip-drip-drip of water, it had eroded away the professional courtesy between departments until suddenly the project found itself stalled on a faultline of resentment. If it grew any wider, the dream of a new paradigm in starship construction would collapse into a reheat of the mediocrity of Operation Next Step - and a guarantee that the Federation would again find itself behind the curve when the Klingons next tested its mettle.
Too many hands, all pulling in different directions; too many dreams, pecking each other to death over details … perhaps the old Vulcan had accounted for ambition after all.
Marvick's pencil skidded in time with the yawing of the cabin, which the runabout's inertial dampeners were slow to correct. "Look, it's very pretty out there, Bob, but what are we looking for?"
"Let's call it inspiration," April replied.
There was a silence before Marvick continued, "Well, for a team-building exercise, this has got to be the least exercise I've ever gotten."
"Take heart, Laurence," Daystrom said mildly. "Perhaps in a moment a passing Orion will excite your wandering eye where the splendors of space cannot."
"If you don't scare them off with your sparkling personality first, like all your other associates—"
April interjected: "Cool it, both of you. We may not be in the office but I still expect you two to behave. So no more jelly beans, Larry."
Daystrom smirked. Marvick made Compu-Daystrom's robot head cruder.
Guided by April, the Al-Biruni coasted along a long curve that brought it parallel with the densest region of Ballard's circumstellar disk. This was a more delicate maneuver than it seemed - drift too close, and the Class J's teardrop cabin would be ground to bits by planetesimals, or dashed upon the larger volatiles; too far away, and he risked missing what he was searching for amongst the stellar debris. He recalibrated the forward sensors and pinged experimentally at the cloud, panning for monotanium.
"I was a crewman on the Starship Gates when it passed through this system," he explained, feathering the reaction thrusters. "While on survey duty we spotted an alien derelict caught in the debris field. We dated it to around Earth's 14th century, but Command pulled us away before we could take a closer look. That's just how it is on the border - a few birds-of-prey poking their beaks around where they don't belong, and we forget all about exploring."
"Would I be correct in presuming that wreck is the object of our excursion today, captain?" asked Daystrom.
April nodded. "It was already in rough shape years ago, so don't expect its condition to be much better today. But with any luck, there's still enough left to get a good look inside."
"We're all a little outside our expertise here, aren't we?" Marvick offered. "I mean, I'm an engineer, not an archaeologist."
"And you're here in that capacity, mister."
"Well, sure, but shouldn't we have brought out the tow truck? Or at least a couple work bees?"
"I can assure you we're equipped to conduct this investigation ourselves, Laurence." Daystrom patted the carry case beside his seat - a movement that appeared ungainly, for such a large man in such a cramped space. "The matter is well in hand."
"Oh, well, if the master computer is satisfied —"
"Last warning," April said coolly.
"Sorry, Bob. … Doctor."
Daystrom was too busy to hear. He craned his neck, pointing out the canopy at a blinking, glittering something hovering just outside a denser region of the cloud. "There, Robert. You see it."
"Low-priority marker buoy left by the Gates. We meant to double back at the time; best laid plans." The captain slowed the shuttle to a crawl, turned his attention to the scanner. "Which means if memory serves, and there's been no major disturbance in the belt since we left…"
Marvick had all but climbed over April's back, clipboard stuffed & forgotten inside the armrest of his chair. "Turn a little more to starboard, Bob, I think I see it."
Even half-sunk in dust and ravaged by meteoroids, the alien wreck was a strangely stirring sight - like a great sailing ship of ancient Earth, entombed in the pack ice of the Arctic. Daystrom was no ship-spotter, but the domed protrusion from its spread-wing hull surfaced vague memories of xeno-historical lectures from his collegiate youth despite his adolescent disinterest; at the time, he'd only shown up for the elective credits. Now he wished he'd paid more attention.
"Surely not a Klingon vessel," he ventured anyway.
"Promellian, actually," April said. (It would have come to Daystrom eventually). "Much, much older. But archaeology scuttlebutt has it that finds like these were the common ancestor for all their battlecruisers since the D4 of Archer's time."
"An uncanny resemblance. Were they likewise warlike?"
"Battled the Menthars to mutual extinction, all over our quadrant and beyond."
"A pity. Imagine what we might have learned from them had they chosen peace."
Marvick tucked his pencil behind an ear as he studied the ancient vessel. "We've only ever found fragments of their tech before - never anything this complete. But the things they did with positron ducts… Bob, this is incredible, when do we get to go aboard—? " But the starlight shifted through the dust cloud even as he spoke, throwing the gashes and pits in the battlecruiser's weathered hull into stark relief - in some places, where it had been punched clean through to the other side. "Oh."
"The cosmic rays outside are too intense for EV suits," April explained. "And even if we drag it out, good luck trying to run a walking tour in there - the Swiss cheese on my sandwich had better structural integrity."
"I thought we could… Well. Damn."
Understanding flashed upon Daystrom. "Not to worry, Laurence," he said, reaching into his carry-on and producing a control unit. "You'll get your tour. As I said, the moment has been prepared for."
April touched a button on his control board; a shutter slid open on the Al-Biruni's outer skin. At Daystrom's command a spherical drone skimmed out of its alcove on anti-gravs and crossed the chasm between the runabout and the derelict, its duranium shell shielding it from billowing cosmic particulates and low-velocity micrometeoroids.
"A rover probe," Marvick observed. "Clever."
"Remote operation paired with duotronic precision," Daystrom preened, playing with the radio antenna. "The best of both worlds."
"A latter-day Titanic and our very own Jason Jr. How long have you been planning this little field trip, Bob?"
"I've had a while to think about it, with Project Starship stuck in a rut." April spun his chair around and adjusted the tri-viewer mounted overhead. "And when Daystrom mentioned his little proof of concept demo from Okinawa, I figured we'd never have a better time. Patch in, doctor, let's see what we can see."
With the twist of a dial, they had picture. They watched through the rover's transmission as it manuvered through a gouge in the battlecruiser's monotanium hide. With the touch of a button the microbeam lamp embedded in its chassis came alive, throwing pale amber light into the spartan corridor behind. Debris choked the interior of the vessel, too; worse yet, bulkheads had collapsed which would have stymied a conventional boarding party. But Daystrom's practiced fingers navigated the little probe around any obstacle with ease.
"Reactive enough for your mighty engine, mister Marvick?"
"If it can scale to a cruiser, Doctor Daystrom."
April pointed up at the monitor. "Follow this junction, here. Let's get a look at their operations center." That was his gift as a leader - a quiet, yet forceful presence, wielded in just the right amount to push conflicting competencies towards a greater goal. The charisma of a leader. Daystrom envied him that gift - but not enough to trade away his own. Men seldom made history through managerial discretion alone.
The corridor widened into an open chamber where internal structural damage was thankfully minimal. Here were arranged all the hallmarks of a starship bridge - tactical display monitor spanning the forward bulkhead, command chair at center-fore, dedicated stations for department systems surrounding - all familiar elements to Starfleet, merely positioned differently. Though clearly of a prior epoch, the technology was remarkably sophisticated for its time and, thanks to the vacuum of space, well-preserved. A state which extended to its unfortunate crew - all now mummified within the cloudy vacuum, and still belted into their seats.
It was humbling to be here - in this tomb, which had drifted upon the tide of history; among this people, which had met extinction at their posts - even through a camera's eyes. Daystrom was moved, as he often was, to imagine a future where no man had to die so pointlessly in space… and whatever else the Promellians had been, here was proof they were men.
"Watch your attitude, doctor."
"Marvick, I haven't even said anything."
"The rover, Dick - headroom is at a premium over there. Get a closer look at their control stations, if you can." The engineer stood and squinted into the viewer, murmuring under his breath; immature and irksome as he was, he truly came alive in the presence of machinery - when he could follow that inner drive for discovering how all the components of a system fit together, and his intuition for seeing it. It was a spark familiar to Daystrom; a reminder that for all their differences, they were more alike than not. Even brothers could quarrel, he supposed. (IDIC had begun as another of Surak's analects, had it not?)
"Maneuver carefully, Daystrom," April cautioned. "This is technically a war grave."
"Does this thing record? We need some way to save all this ... just look at those front panels. They built these things to last — their great-great-grandchildren could run these same consoles, if they had any." Marvick let out a breath as he considered. "And to think we were just starting on the printing press while they were — Hang on, I don't see any mounts or plugs for control modules..."
"No astrogational plotters, either - which suggests they considered physically referencing their charts from the bridge redundant. Gentlemen, we may be looking at a fully integrated tac-nav suite."
"Remarkable," Daystrom said thoughtfully. "I should like to examine their tie-in circuits, if they're in acceptable enough condition."
Marvick scoffed, reaching for his tablet. "They may not be, once the Archaeology Council gets through with them."
"Nevertheless. Their library mainframe may not have survived intact, but perhaps its architecture may give us clues on how to accomplish their wonders in our time."
Captain April grinned. "Copying the other kids' homework, Doctor?"
"Taking inspiration, Robert."
"As long as it works." He twisted in his chair to touch the console; Mozart's Romanze Andante drifted into the cabin. "I'm still getting flash-faxes from Rittenhouse haranguing us to figure it out for the new Class One heavy cruisers. My yeoman is probably buried alive in them by now."
"Then she won't mind if we stay and take some more pictures." Marvick flipped to a new page, having already diagrammed the command deck, and jabbed his trembling pencil at the screen. "Follow that power conduit, doctor - the diagonal beam there. If you're going to crib from their processors, I get to look at their power plant. Fair's fair."
Daystrom chuckled. It was difficult not to get swept away in the thrill of discovery, himself. "And where shall we go from there, dear Laurence?"
"Before a review board, if they learn we were here without a chaperone. Bob, that reminds me, I've been talking with a friend about the hull plan, you know, the lines - tell me what you think of this..." And he sketched something out that Daystrom can only glimpse at, something with a wide saucer and narrow engine pods, and a barrel shape hanging between all three…
And for now, that was enough. It was enough that he didn't grasp the whole picture yet, or where he'd fit inside it, or if it wasn't wholly his own. It was enough that Robert's scheme for unsticking the project had worked. It was enough that the dusty old Vulcan proverbs had been right, in their inscrutable way.
It was enough to be here - amongst the past, one man of vision alongside his peers, summoning the future.