Chapter 25: The Orbital Deception
Uhura put down the earphone in frustration. She leaned back in her chair and sighed. It had initially been nice to serve a role other than the mainstays of translation and cultural assistance, but now she was regretting having taken a role beyond the normal scope of comms.
“Having trouble, Lieutenant?” asked Arex, who was in the process of correcting their orbit to avoid proximity to the peculiar orbit of the planet’s so-called “sun”.
“I’m receiving absolutely no signal from it.” Uhura stood up and looked out the viewscreen. It was still out there, and she had come to understand where it was supposed to be. Except that there appeared to be nothing out there at all.
“Which is not unexpected for a cloaked vessel.”
“The cloak is a form of optical, photonic camouflage. Based on Starfleet records, they work most efficiently in the visible spectrum but much more poorly in the microwave or long-wave bands.”
“Are you anticipating that the Klingons would be using radio communication?”
“No. But a ship should produce interference. Every computer, every power conduit, the warp core itself. There’s always noise, Arax. But I’m not hearing anything at all.” She put her hands on the back of the captain’s chair and stared out at the space, frowning. “They’re just sitting there. In orbit. No signals are going down to the planet, I would have heard those. But there’s also no relay outward. It’s floating in total radio silence.”
“Which is not unexpected for a stealth mission.”
“But why would they just sit there? What would they be doing?”
“It would be difficult to ask them.”
Uhura sighed. “It would be nice if we could use active sensors. Maybe if we can position it between their light-producing satellite and us, we can get a better view of where exactly the cloak shifts the radio signals. I could resolve the receiver band a little bit more. Ensign Chekov, if you could--”
She looked down to see Chekov leaning forward at an odd angle, his hands still on his controls—but his eyes closed. He was sound asleep.
Arax immediately slapped Chekov in the back of the head, not taking his other two hands off his controls. Chekov sputtered and sat up suddenly.
“GAH! Ya ne kartoshka, ne edyat—what? Where?” He looked around. “Oh. I was having the most wonderful dream. There were unicorns, dressed only in their socks, and we were on an island...studying for the Starfleet theoretical quantum geometry final...”
“Mr. Chekov,” said Uhura, approaching him and putting a hand on his chair. “Firstly. I did not want to know that. I did not want to envision that. Second, if Captain Kirk ever catches you sleeping on his bridge, he will reassign you to the engineering team that oversees the ship’s waste management system. Permanently.” She leaned closer. “And if you ever sleep on my watch again, I’ll be much more lenient.”
“You will?”
“Yes. Certainly. I’ll have you blown out an airlock.”
Chekov’s eyes widened. “You—you wouldn’t do that, Lieutenant--”
“You would be surprised,” said Arak, performing his species’s equivalent of a smile. “The last person to do so was that poor deltan fellow. We were in low orbit on a red giant at the time. At least it was quick.”
Chekov was shaking, and now most certainly awake. He began typing quickly, doing his various assays. “My apologies, Lieutenant, I was awake all of last night considering the implications of the pony’s mathematics on current warp theory. I got caught up in trying to rectify her wariance calculations with modern statistics to find a solid solution, but I had no luck--”
“I do not need excuses, Mr. Chekov. Sleep in your bunk. That’s what it’s for. Not on the bridge.”
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
Uhura went back to her station, and Chekov, blushing, went to work. Arax, though, patted him on the shoulder, again with the third arm.
“Do not be so concerned,” he said, quietly. “You are an ensign. You cannot be demoted, just court-martialed.”
“That is...true. Thank you?”
“It is not even the worst I have seen. I was once on a ship where command assigned us a denobulan science officer, forgetting that we had an Orion first officer. He was asleep on his viewfinder for three days before anyone noticed.”
Chekov nodded, but was preoccupied by something on his screen. Then he turned suddenly. “Lieutenant. It seems I have lost the Captain’s signal!”
The bridge went silent.
“Excuse me, Mr. Chekov?”
“I was examining the planet’s surface to track his position and that of Mr. Spock and Lieutenant M’Ress. Which is not hard, because their life-signs are very distinct. But I lost them. I can no longer receive the signal.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, that could mean they have died.”
“I would rather not like to consider that option, Mr. Chekov, provide me a better one.”
“It is...possible that they are out of range, I suppose, or hidden behind a great deal of rock. Or metallic trees. Or a dampening field.”
“Ponies do not have that technology.”
“No. Which is why death is being more likely.” He projected an image to the view-screen on the beautiful planet below, showing the last set of coordinates. “This is where I had last detected them. Scans suggest a small willage.”
“And their comms signal?”
Chekov checked again. “That is not active either.”
“Then they are probably not dead, or the comms would still be transmitting. They must be hidden by something.” Uhura paused, then walked to the comms station.
“Lieutenant?”
“I am hailing the pony military on their moon colony.”
“For what purpose?”
“Because, Mr. Chekov, this is a collaborative effort. And I have questions.”
Uhura connected the channel, converting the modulators to the primitive encrypted radio used by the ponies. There was, for a moment, no response, but then a reply. She put it onscreen.
The viewscreen shifted to show the same stark military control room that the ponies had first shown them when they had arrived. Except this time, only one pony was present. A gray mare who immediately attempted to hide behind the table, with only her eyes and the top of her head exposed. She was not a unicorn, and had no wings, which Uhura understood translated to either “soil-horse” or “earth-pony” in their language.
“I am Lieutenant Uhura, acting command officer of the USS Enterprise.”
“General-Commander Spitfire isn’t here,” squeaked the pony. She was quiet and sounded terrified. “Rear-Lieutenant Blossomforth is also not here, she’s doing her daily yoga. I can send for her, but I need to find a medic to unfold her--”
“Your name is petty-officer Marble, isn’t it?”
Her eyes widened. “How do you know? Can you read my mind? Please don’t read my mind, you’ll find out that I’m secretly attracted to my cousin!”
“Is that your name?”
She paused. “Petty-officer Marble Pie. Yes?”
“Can I ask you a question?”
She more or less squeaked in response.
“We were tracking our team on the planet, but it looks like something is wrong. We’ve lost the signal. The last place we saw them was here.” She transmitted the coordinates. Marble Pie looked down, squinting at them, and squeaked slightly.
“That’s Ponyville,” she said. “My big sister used to live there. Until she came up here. To make moon pies.”
“Is there anything that would block our signal?”
“like metallic trees?” asked Chekov.
Marble paused, her face still half-hidden. “I like his voice,” she said, blushing slightly. “But not that I know of. Hold on. There’s an office down there.” She disappeared from frame and came back with a telegraph key. She put the headphones on and began tapping out a signal. Uhura saw it on her meters; it was being transmitted by crude radio to the planet.
The tapping stopped after a moment, and Marble listened. Then a strange frown came over her face.
“That’s weird,” she said. “They’re not responding. But we have a telegraph post right there in town. We have to, for District 51, it’s a military requirement. And Sparkler’s always there. She’s so nice. And almost as hot as my cousin.”
“Is the connection broken?”
“It’s radio. What could stop radio?”
Uhura knew the answer. “I’m not sure,” she lied, “but we’ll help look into it if you need us to.”
“No, I’ll send a ticket. We’ll get the Equetrians to check the antenna but it will take them a while to find a latter. Sorry.” She slowly slid below the table again. “Was that all, scary alien lady?”
“I did have one other question.”
“Oh?”
Uhura cleared her throat, knowing that they were listening—but taking a chance. She flipped off the universal translator, and when she spoke, it was in the guttural tones, occasional whinneys, clicks and squeaks of the Equestrian native language.
Marble’s eyes widened, and she sat up.
“Your mouth is lining up with your words. You’re...you’re speaking Equestrian, aren’t you?”
Uhura smiled, continuing in the almost pronounceable chain of alien words . “Yes. Am officer of talk, like language learn. Am good?”
“Not really, but I can understand you. And it’s so impressive you learned it so fast.” She sat up higher, apparently being much more comfortable with the conversation. With normal ship-to-ship communication, the ship’s computer could usually sync lips well; since she was essentially viewing Uhura through an an ancient television set, it must have looked quite disturbing to see Equestrian coming out of the mouths of individuals speaking English. Now, though, they were both speaking the same language--the language of small horses.
“Had big question. Signal. Moving. In orbit. Big thing, signal, but can’t see. You touch signal?”
Marble paused, confused, trying to think of what this meant. Uhura was using poor grammar, but partially on purpose. Had she fed her own words through the translator, it would have come out as gibberish—but with the extrapulatory power of a native speaker, it could perhaps be understood. Which meant that if Klingons were listening, they would have very little idea what she was saying. What Marble said, though, they would almost certainly understand.
“Oh!” she said, suddenly realizing. “Yes, you noticed that too?”
“What is being thing?”
“I don’t know, but our sensors picked it up. The magic resonance crystals. Something sets them off. Something magic. But we don’t know what it is. The telescopes don’t see it. The science stallions think it’s part of the poles of the planets lining up but...”
“Butt?”
“Not the right word. It’s cyclic. We’ve seen it every few years. But telescopes only got good enough to see it lately. Except it’s not there. Sorry, I don’t know what it could be.”
“Is being great-much boat?”
“A ship?” Marble shook her head. “No. Yours is really big but doesn’t do the same thing. Moondancer’s does, though, but only sometimes when the crystals are fresh. And I can always tell when they’re fresh. I lick them to check.” She paused. “Don’t tell Spitfire. She’ll make me do the sorry-dance again.”
“You give help much, is thanking grass camel flowerbed. Goodbuy.”
Marble waved, and the communication cut out. At that point, the entire bridge crew was staring at Uhura.
“What did you just say?” asked Chekov.
“More importantly, how did you produce those sounds without choking?” asked Arax.
“Careful linguistics,” replied Uhura, coughing. “Their communications are breached too. Something is blocking us.” She paused. “And they are detecting the cloaked ship too, but they don’t know what it is. It’s leaving a signature that they can detect but we cannot. Mr. Chekov, can you modulate the passive sensors to pick it up?”
“Well...yes, theoretically, but without a positive control--”
“Use the pony ship in the shuttle bay for comparison. Their warp-core has a signal that our instruments are not detecting right now, and apparently the ship out there gives off the same type.”
“To reverse the internal noise compensations...It will take some time, Lieutenant.”
“Then make it so. Is there a way to scan the planet for a dampening field while we wait?”
“No. A dampening field, it dampens. Including it’s own field. It is as if looking for something you can see only by its absence, which perhaps I could do if there was a transmitter down there but...” He paused, and then started typing.
“Mr. Chekov?”
“Such a reaction, it would take great power to maintain. A fusion reactor, or antimatter, or something else with much force.”
“Whatever it is would be dampened by the field itself,” noted Arak.
“Yis, but only on standard waveforms. Such a field, unless very strong and well-made, would not be able to dampen its own neutrino emissions, should it be powered by fusion reactor. I am recalibrating to detect them and...there.”
Two dots appeared on the planet. One close to Ponyville, and the other just slightly farther—and orders of magnitude more powerful.
“What is that?” asked Uhura.
“I am...not sure. A fusion reaction, I suppose, but one of unimaginable power. Such neutriono flux, it would be generated by a whole star, not merely a reactor. An artifact, a mathematical misinterpretation within the computer, maybe? No known system could contain such power for more than a few nanoseconds. But the smaller one, it is a reactor. Weak, but for sure.”
“A fusion reactor...on a planet with at best steam-age technology.”
“Yis. Lieutenant, something is down there.”
“Then I think we know where Captain Kirk is, don’t we?”
They all paused. And then Chekov looked back. “Lieutenant, what should we do, then?”
Uhura sat down in Kirk’s chair. She sighed. “All we can do now is wait, and be ready. Because when it happens, it will all happen at once. I guarantee it.”
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The plot thickens! Are they Klingons? Are they not? Will Kirk ever get his shirt ripped?
I'm really enjoying this story, the comedic bits make me smile alot.
Being Pinkie's twin means you can just as easily fall prey to the pernicious whims of comedy.
Ah, the classic Trek epiphany into technobabble/system reconfiguration. And I do love the casual neutrino detection. If you can already keep a matter-antimatter reaction under control, you might as well throw in detecting the virtually undetectable while you're at it.
And just what do they have squirreled away in District 51? Assuming that that's even the ludicrously intense neutrino source. For all we know, it could be Celestia.
I thought Warhammer 40K was the only story that used "Warp" technology.
11127224
Same name completely different mechanism. Also, Star Trek predates WH40K by many many years.
Star Trek "warp" means warping space (subspace in their fiction) and is actually the most "plausible" real world FTL method (see Alcubierre drive).
Whereas in WH40K the "Warp" is a shortcut through what is effectively a hell dimension (see why you need a Geller Field) full of things that want to rape, kill, and eat you and not necessarily in that order.
11127472
In fact, the main reason said things are hostile to each other is because they cannot agree about the order. :)
"Ensign's personal log, supplemental. The Lieutenant seemed excited about serving as acting-captain while the captain is on the planet, which was good news; happy officers are less strict, and I did not sleep last night. However, after an exchange with the Equestrian lunar military post in their native language, she has become quite irritable. It seems taking the horse-talk in the ear was not a pleasant experience. End log."
-Last recorded log entry of Ensign Chekov before falling victim to a freak airlock accident aboard the USS Enterprise in orbit around Equestria.
This is an interesting chapter and it's impressive that Uhura learned the language so quickly.
A rough guess might be, given th solar neutrino detection rate and distance, and that claimed source, would be within about 100 meters of its center, the neutrino flux would be roughly 20 orders of magnitude greater and thus maybe discernable in local effect variation?
If its near Ponyville, its the location of the Tree Of Harmony under the origional Everfree Castle?
I will leave the unfortunate peurile term for Airlock, sorry, Ensign Checkov to accidentally state.
Maybe the cloaked Klingon vessel was visited by Pinkamena Diane Pie and Fluttershy, and they decided as since it was so well stocked, they might as well commandeer it for party shed purposes?
11127224
star trek uses warp technology, 40k uses the hellscape that is The Warp. Don't get the two mixed up cas deflector dishes are a poor excuse for a gellar field
I'm guessing that, after that conversation with Marble, Uhura is feeling a little horse.
I am beginning to think that the "ship" is derelict. Either broken down and the source of Area 51's space tech, or part of the automated system that keeps this planet alive. ...or a prison for a fifth-dimensional being that would give Discord a headache to look at.
11129997 But she is a cunning linguist.
So that ship had been they for some time... possibly longer then Rari-Trill, explaining the lack of detecting it come into system.... though that would massively pre-date the Klingons getting cloaking tech. And it occasionally emits the same energy as the Sparkle Drive....
The "mysterious backers" of F&F want to do this under the table, so won't make a huge deal of it.... this is good, it gives more time to find an answer to all this.
Great job on Uhura too, very nice touch.
Dangit Blossom forth! Too flexible!