“Do you perceive a snag in your proposal, then?”
A pause. “Ah.”
“Ah. Do you have any usefulideas?” You had to love Torvig, but his enthusiasm for his wild hypotheses often blinded him to their practical flaws, and at times it took some prodding to get him focused on the same consensus reality as everyone else.
“Is retrieval by shuttle still not an option?”
“The shuttles are needed to deploy the probes. We have to try to get someof these probes past the squale blockade.”
“Hrrmmm…An orbital phaser barrage around your position?”
“I’ll keep it in mind, Ensign. Keep thinking about how to boost the transporter— beforewe run out of island down here. Vale out.”
The island shuddered again, and a treelike stalk a few segments over snapped and fell over. It may come to using phasers,she thought. But she was reluctant to give the order. After all, she was the invader here, and her crew had done enough damage to this world. Ship’s phasers could be set on stun, but the effect was unreliable. A hand phaser had feedback sensors that could calibrate the beam strength and duration to the target’s metabolism to keep the effect nonlethal, but that kind of feedback wasn’t possible from orbit. That was why Starfleet policy discouraged the practice. Besides, given the squales’ unusual sensitivity to energy fields, Vale couldn’t be sure that even a stun charge wouldn’t have a more serious effect on them. Even firing to frighten them off might be a bad idea. Hell, the way things are going, it’d probably just make them madder.
As Vale heard the now-familiar sound of another floater segment being broken away behind her, she almost missed the hail on her combadge. “—salis to Vale. Come in!”
She tapped the badge. “Olivia? Is that you?”
“Yes, Commander!”Bolaji, calling from the Marsalis, sounded excited. “You need to hear the signal we just picked up! I’m patching it in.”A pause, then: “Go ahead, Ensign.”
A moment later, Vale’s’s annoyance at the distraction vanished when she heard: “Lavena to Vale. Do you read me?”
Her heart raced. “Holy shit, Aili, is that you?”
Laughter. “Oh, Commander, thank the Deep! I’m here, I’m fine. Captain Riker is alive, but he’s very ill. We need a rescue shuttle right away. He’s on a floater not far from my position.”
“Bolaji? How close are you to Lavena?”
“About six minutes, ma’am.”
Under the circumstances, they could certainly spare the delay. “Permission granted to divert from probe deployment to retrieve the captain.”
“Aye, Commander! Diverting to retrieve the captain!”came Bolaji’s immediate reply.
Another voice intruded on the channel. “Aili, is that really you? Ah, Ra-Havreii here!”From the background noise, he was still in the scouter gig, heading toward the base at top speed. Vale wondered if the base would provide any refuge for him by the time he arrived.
“Xin! It’s good to hear your voices, all of you.”
“Aili, we could really use your diplomacy right now. We’re under attack from the squales!”
“What? Why? What did you do?”
“Wha—what the hell do you mean, what didwe do?! We’re only trying to save their whole damned planet, and they’re showing their gratitude by trying to kill me!”
“Hello, superior officer here!” Vale shouted. “Listen, Aili. Are you on good terms with the squales?” It stood to reason, if she and Riker were still alive.
“Some of them, Commander.”
“Well, it’s a start. Ra-Havreii’s right, we’re having a diplomatic meltdown of the potentially fatal variety, and I don’t just mean for us. Listen—”
As Vale spelled out the immediate threat to her crewmates and the larger threat to Droplet in a few terse sentences, Aili absorbed it with growing dismay. She understood perfectly why the squales were so afraid and angry, so she could not blame them for their actions. But if they couldn’t be made to understand the truth, their own fear would doom them.
And Aili Lavena was the only one who could make them understand. Only she knew them well enough to make the case in terms that would hold meaning for them. The fate of this entire world rested on her voice.
Why me?an old, familiar part of her asked. I can’t handle this. There must be someone else.
But that impulse was quickly damped. Aili was done running from responsibility. She’d always done more harm than good that way.
“Acknowledged,” she told Vale. “I’ll talk to them. All of them. But I have to leave the probe. I need the squales’ help, and they can’t stand being close to it.”
“We can damp the EM fields now. We can drop more probes, get your message out quicker.”
“It won’t work, Commander. They don’t hear speakers the same way as voice. I need to do this the natural way. Through the ri’Hoyalina—the deep sound channel. It will take a few hours, but it’s the only way.”
After a brief pause, Vale said, “Do it. We’ll hold out as long as we can.”