Outside the transparent bubble canopy of the Sphinx work pod, the metal of the transwarp gateway stretches on before me for a kilometer or more. The little ship shudders as the RCS thrusters kick in, sending it in a long spiral around the massive tube that makes up one of the gate's six sides. The tube is half a kilometer thick, and inside it are millions of kilometers of warp coils, and it is only one side of the gate, and there are twelve gates....
In all of this, I'm searching for something which might not be there, and which might be no bigger than my little finger if it is there.
It seems hopeless at first glance, but only first glance. There are only so many places where you can put sensitive circuitry on a transwarp gate; the electromagnetic surges produced when those warp coils fire up will fry any unshielded device nearby. There are, to be sure, shielded areas... and those are occupied by the control circuitry for the gate, and they are regularly inspected by maintenance crews, and any unauthorized devices will be found and removed.
But the configuration of the warp fields makes for occasional dead zones, places where the fields overlap out of phase and cancel each other out.... A competent warp theorist, which I am, can work out where those dead zones are. Of course, any illicit sensor device is going to be rigged to self-destruct if it's detected, so an active sensor scan from the King Estmere is out of the question. But against a close-up passive search - or, in simple terms, someone going out and looking for it - a sensor package has no defense.
My only problem is the sheer size of the gateways. Taking an EV suit and covering the areas on foot would take weeks; the Sphinx is an acceptable compromise, its engines capable of covering the distances easily, its passive sensors and its transparent canopy giving me all the detection capability I need. Still, there is a lot of ground to cover -
My only problem? Not quite. There are always the distractions.
"You've been out there for hours," Ronnie Grau's voice says in my ear. "Have you found anything besides micrometeorite scars yet?"
"Don't you ever sleep?" I snap back at her.
"Sleep is for tortoises!" Sounds like yet another of her quotations. I wonder, fleetingly, what a tortoise is. "Face facts, Tylha, this is a wild goose chase. A mare's nest. A mare's nest with wild geese in it."
"Stop wittering, Ronnie." There is an outraged silence from the other end of the link. I smile. I don't think Ronnie's used to people talking to her like that, and I think it might be good for her.
My eyes narrow. There is something up ahead - a faint blemish on the endless shining metal of the gateway. I nudge the Sphinx in that direction.
"If the gates power up while you're that close," Ronnie says over the link, "you're going to be spam in a can. That pod will tear open like cheap cardboard."
"Nice of you to be concerned."
"That'd leave me the senior Starfleet officer on this jaunt! I'd have to do all the paperwork! Don't you know how to delegate, dammit?"
"My idea, my risk." Technically, of course, she's right. Technically, as a Vice Admiral, I should sit calmly on my bridge and let my away teams take all the risks. It's one technicality I've never got the hang of. I doubt Ronnie has, either.
"Anyway," I continue, "we'd have plenty of warning if the gates powered up, right? Even in this pod, I could get clear in time." The mark on the metal is getting closer. I try to fight down a feeling of anticipation. Three times already, I've spotted little marks; three times, they've turned out to be nothing but a dent or a scar left by some passing fragment of cosmic debris.
I lean forwards in my seat and peer intently through the canopy. A faint line... a line of shadow, in the pod's spotlight... and another line, joining it.... "Yes," I say, with satisfaction. The lines meet at a right angle. Something square, sitting on the skin of the gateway, coloured to match the metal. But micrometeorite strikes don't make perfect squares.
"Yes, what?" Ronnie asks.
"Got it." The object is square, and perhaps the size of my hand. My fingers find the controls, extend one of the work pod's manipulator arms. This is one time I'd prefer to be in an EV suit, but I've used the manipulators before, I can handle the fine positioning required.
"You've what? Well, dammit, Tylha, that's - I mean, needle in a haystack's not in it, this is, what, needle in a - a hayfield, maybe. Made of other needles."
I can handle it if I'm not distracted. "Quiet, Ronnie. This is the tricky bit."
Close-up active scanning would be as bad as long-range; I need to work passive, still. The manipulator arm is carrying a sub-quantum induction probe; the minute flexings in spacetime created by the circuitry of this - object - can be read, slowly and imperfectly, through this device. Reading them, though, is one thing; interpreting them is quite another. It's something well outside my range of competence.
But not everyone's. I hit the comms panel for another channel. "Klerupiru? I'm sending a data uplink to you now."
"Ready, sir." The Ferengi cyber-warfare expert sounds fresh, brisk and cheerful. "Receiving.... Might need better, sir, can you bring in the probe to fifteen millimeters and step sensitivity range up to 2.3?"
I hold my breath as my fingers make tiny, tiny touches on the controls. The manipulator arm moves forwards and down with a nightmare slowness.
"That's better," says Klerupiru. "Resolving scan...." A pause, that seems to last several years. Then, I hear her laugh. "I know that one. It's from Quog's Discreet Surveillance and Monitoring Emporium."
"Does that mean -?"
"Every unit is enciphered with an individually tailored fractal key, guaranteed unbreakable, personalized to the customer."
I feel my antennae droop. "Doesn't sound too hopeful."
"What Quog doesn't tell his customers is that each unit also has a master key, accessible to Quog... and anyone who knows Quog, and has a talent for oomox." She laughs again. "Must admit, I scrubbed my hands for hours afterwards. Transmitting the unlock now."
On the comms display, lines suddenly dart upwards, representing an abrupt burst of data transmission across the link. Then, just as suddenly, the square package beneath the probe glows red, then white, then boils away in a puff of vapour and is gone.
"What the hell -?"
"It's all right, sir. It's meant to do that, as soon as the download's finished." There is satisfaction in Klerupiru's voice. "I have a complete image of that unit's memory in my console now. Beginning analysis."
"Good." I pull back the manipulator, and frown. The sub-quantum probe suffered in that sudden flare of energy... at the very least, I need to get back to the ship and replace it. And, with luck, my job here is done anyway. I fire the RCS arrays and bring the pod around.
The comms console flashes an urgent light at me, demanding my attention. I switch channels.
"Tylha." Ronnie's voice is flat and tense. "Get back in. Someone's powering up the Klink-side gateway."
"How long?" I ask.
"Ten minutes at best. Better move."
It's just possible it might be Starfleet, that a task force has reached the gateway in the neutral zone and is coming through to support us. It's just possible, too, that this is some random smuggler on an errand of their own. But these are outside possibilities at best. The safe bet is that whoever's using the gate is Klingon... either regular KDF, or Klur's shadowy backers. Either way, we have to be ready.
"Shohl to King Estmere. Red alert, battle stations. Pick me up when I reach transporter range, abandon the pod."
I fire up the Sphinx's micro-impulse engine, and hurtle back towards my ship.
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