"Deck Eight."
Deck Eight is normally just a notional thing, a shallow bulge at the base of the engineering hull. Now, the turbolift drops down the shaft... to emerge from the bottom of the ship, sliding down the forward landing pylon. The door hisses open, and I step out, walk down the slope of the pylon's splayed foot... and step down, onto the surface of the Solanae landing dock.
The science teams have spread out already, deploying scanners and portable lab facilities. Alert-looking security people are patrolling the notional perimeter, though so far we haven't seen anything that might count as a hostile. I spot a white-clad figure bending over a heavy-duty scanner, and walk over to him. "Dr. Islim. Anything to report?"
The Andorian medic straightens up, his stern-featured face thoughtful. "No biological or biochemical hazards that I can detect. There's a lot of sensor interference, still, though. But biological agents don't seem to have been a Solanae thing.... As far as I can tell, it's safe enough to proceed into the interior, on that count anyway."
"Thank you." I pause for a moment, then ask, "There are definitely life signs of some kind, though?"
Islim sighs. "There are life signs in the megastructure, yes. What kind of life, I can't say. I'm working on filtering out the sensor distortions, but - even so, it looks like some life form we're not familiar with. Sorry, sir. There is just too much noise, I can't get you any specifics yet."
I nod. "Thanks, anyway. Keep trying."
And I walk further out, onto the ancient Solanae dock. The surface is dark grey, featureless; my boots make dull thudding noises as I walk. Behind me, Timor gleams brilliantly in the beam of light from high, high overhead. Other beams make pools of brightness on the dock, but there are no other ships, no signs of life.
I walk up to a security patrol; three humans, carrying MACO battle rifles, looking tense. "Perimeter secure, sir," the commanding lieutenant reports. "No signs of life."
"Thank you." I look around. We seem to be at the end of the dock; off-white Solanae walls curve up, ahead of me, and there are doors, circular portals - "Do we have any scans beyond those doorways?"
"Not yet, sir. Too much sensor interference."
"Well," I say, "let's take a look. We have to see if we can open them, at least." If we are to get any further into the structure - and what else are we here for? I stride off towards the nearest portal, the security team following in my wake.
The circular portal is... typical Solanae design. Smaller than the one we used to enter the spire, larger than the normal personnel doorways we've found in other spires. Maybe it was used for service machinery, or auxiliary craft, or... something else that I haven't thought of. I raise my tricorder, send a standard pulse code. The portal rumbles and splits open, its segments twirling away into the walls. "Standard pattern," I comment, and step forward.
"Sir," says the security lieutenant, "should we wait for backup?"
Probably we should, but I'm curious - and there is no sign of life in the space beyond the doorway. "It won't hurt to take a look," I say, and continue on forwards.
On the other side of the door is a sort of hallway, a hemispherical space with things hanging from the ceiling. "Looks like holo-emitters," I say. "Maybe for control panels, maybe for the sort of map displays we've seen before." Opposite the entrance, a low archway gives out onto another space. Solanae architecture is weird, by our standards - lots of curved shapes, lots of wasted space, lots of features that change - extending walkways and ramps, extending staircases, force fields that appear suddenly to take the place of floors. The Solanae design aesthetic is... peculiar.
There are markings on the floor before that archway. More signage? I stroll over to look at it, but it tells me nothing. I look through the arch, then step through. I'm in another big, irregularly shaped, empty space, lit by scattered spotlamps in a distant ceiling. The floor is rough, patterned with blocky shapes, and there are fluted columnar shapes descending from that ceiling. I kneel down, trace the outline of one block with my fingertips -
- and there is a sudden grating noise, and everything moves.
The floor is in motion. Blocks are rising out of it and turning over, folding themselves into new shapes. "Stay back!" I yell at the security team, and glance desperately around. All of a sudden, this place is reconfiguring itself - and I have scant seconds to find a way out of it, before it crushes me.
Beneath my feet, the block I'm standing on rears up.
I leap, muscles driving me upwards in a prodigious bound. My outstretched fingers find the surface of one of the descending columns, and I scrabble for a handhold while a sea of machinery roars and rumbles beneath me. I grab hold of a projecting spike, but it is moving, too, turning and starting to retract. I swing and leap again, my tail windmilling in the air to balance and guide me, and I reach another precarious handhold on another column, and have a second or two to gather myself and leap again -
The columns are turning, projections extending, spinning, retracting. The air is full of sound - and energy. There are electrical charges here, powerful enough to set my fur crackling.
Something catches my eye, a dark shape in a nearby wall - a dark, stationary shape. I look more closely. It's a - niche, a cubbyhole of some kind. The projection I'm holding is turning, and beneath me, another one is coming into view, counter-rotating around the main column. Sparks crackle from my whiskers. I drop, feel the impact of my feet on the lower projection, use it to thrust off, leaping for the cubbyhole. I crash into the wall, but my hands have found the lip of the hole - I pull myself up, scramble inside. It is barely big enough to hold me. I curl up, panting, while the machinery outside crashes through its revolutions.
It seems to take an age.
When the last echoes of the last crash have died away, I stick my head, cautiously, out of the hole. At first glance, the view is - much the same. Irregularly patterned floor, columnar shapes descending from high above. But that is only the first glance. I snarl, as I realise that the floor has risen, overall. There is no sign of the archway I came in through.
I slap my combadge, irritated. "M'eioi to Timor."
There is no response. I try again. "M'eioi to Timor, come in, please." Nothing but a vague hiss in reply.
I swear to myself. Interference, noise from the spire's systems, is blocking my comms channel. I pull out my tricorder. The ship itself is only a few hundred metres away, and I'm supposed to be an expert in high energy physics - I can identify this interference, filter it out, and get my communications back. In theory.
In practice, it takes several rather fraught minutes of cursing and fiddling with the tricorder before the hissing and popping on the badge resolve themselves into a tinny voice saying "Admiral M'eioi, this is Timor calling, please respond," over and over again. Sumal Jetuz's voice; it's clear enough that I can recognize him, at least. "M'eioi here," I say.
"Good to hear you, sir," says Sumal. "What's your situation?"
I look around again. "Safe enough for the present, but my route back is blocked. I'll have to find an alternative." With comms in this state, transporter operations are not recommended. "Any idea what set that lot off, or was it just my own blundering?"
"I don't think it was just you, sir," says Sumal. "Something happened in the spire - maybe outside it as well. Our best guess is that there was some sort of energy discharge. We can't tell what sort, because the spire's own internal shielding seems to have stepped up a notch. As if something - went live. There's a lot of data traffic in the Solanae systems, too, but we can't interpret it."
"Keep on trying. Oh, and get Linguistics department to look again at that signage. I have a possible translation."
"Sir?"
I grin, ruefully. "I think I walked over a bit that translates as 'caution, heavy machinery in operation beyond this point.' Well, never mind." I study the walls of my little cubbyhole. "I think I'm actually in some sort of survival space, somewhere to take shelter if you're caught up in this lot. If that's the case -"
I press hard on the back wall of the cubbyhole. For a moment, it resists, and then it swings free, revealing a tubular passageway, slanting sharply upwards. "I'm right. An escape hole." The tube is steep, but not too steep to climb. "Sort of like a Jeffries tube. I'll scan as much as possible on my way. Some close-up readings on the Solanae shield devices might help."
"What are you going to do, sir?" Sumal's tinny voice asks.
"Looks like I'm going further into the spire." I glance up the tube, but its ending is lost in shadows. "I'll find my way out of this, then see if I can circle round and make my way back to the landing dock. Don't worry, Commander, I'm sure I'll be fine." I start to climb.
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