Precipice

As she downed the tepid dregs of her fourth cup of coffee for the day, she speculated that her entire department was likely functioning only by the grace of a potent mix of adrenaline and insatiable scientific curiosity.

The reports piled on her desk were too much to face. Stacks of data slates and computer cards threatened to topple over at any moment. When she thought of how hard she had worked to keep her personal work space tidy and organized, the current state of her office felt like a defeat, a surrender to chaos.

It looked like this a year ago,she remembered. Back when I took it over from Xiong. At the time she had prejudged Xiong’s competence based on the muddled condition of his office; now she admitted to herself that she had been too harsh on him. This job could make a basket case out of just about anybody.

Despite the mountains of ostensibly dead-end data their work produced, she and the other researchers had made remarkable discoveries by mining the ancient treasures entrusted to them.

The Taurus Meta-Genome was a complex string of genetic information that, when unraveled, yielded a cornucopia of raw data. Different parts of it had been seeded into seemingly basic life-forms throughout the Taurus Reach, spurring Starfleet to engage in what amounted to an interstellar scavenger hunt.

When coupled with an energy waveform known as the Jinoteur Pattern, the Meta-Genome data was like a key that unlocked one mystery of the universe after another: flawless tissue regeneration, complex matter-energy conversions, and even the first clues to bridging distant points of space-time. Starfleet had documented only part of the waveform’s total pattern, however. Its only known source had been the Jinoteur system, which had been violently destroyed more than a year earlier by a space-time implosion that blinked the system out of existence.

Both the genome and the pattern owed their genesis to a mysterious and dangerous species known as the Shedai. Hundreds of mille

And now there was the Mirdonyae Artifact—the greatest enigma of them all. It promised to unlock many of the most elusive Shedai mysteries, but Xiong and his colleagues insisted it was not a creation of the Shedai. Alas, after more than eight weeks of subjecting it to every test they could imagine, they seemed no closer than before to explaining who had made it, what it was made of, or where it had come from.

Marcus’s black coffee was now completely cold. She drank it anyway. The next series of reports were all from Dr. Wolowitz in the materials-analysis group, which promised an afternoon of dry reading.

She picked up a data slate and prepared herself for another long struggle against boredom.

Then she heard shouting coming from the lab outside.

It grew louder as she dropped the slate and scrambled to her door, which slid open ahead of her. As it did, she heard one voice, loud and clear, barking panicked orders.

“Shut it down!” yelled Xiong, who ran from station to station around the central enclosure of transparent aluminum barriers. “Cut all power! Everyone stop, stop, STOP!”

The other scientists reacted with a flurry of frightened scrambling as they fought to deactivate every console and process. All the blinking readouts on the various panels went dark, and the lab’s normal undertone of energized components pitched downward in a mellisonant hum before fading to silence.

Marcus stormed across the lab and confronted Xiong. “What the hell are you doing? What’s going on?”

He was still trying to catch his breath. “Had to pull the plug,” he said between gasps. “Before it was too late.”

“Too late for what? I need details, Ming.”

Xiong nodded and composed himself. “Sorry,” he said. “Let me try to bring one system back online so I can show you what I found.” He led Marcus to the nearest console and nodded for the Vulcan man standing there to step aside. Marcus watched as Xiong took care to reboot the console in an offline diagnostic mode. While he worked, she noticed his face was pale and his forehead heavy with sweat.

She placed a hand on Xiong’s shoulder. “Try to calm down, Ming. Take a breath and tell me what happened.”

He fished a data card from his pocket and inserted it into a slot on the console. “This morning I started analyzing all the tests we’ve run on the artifact over the last two months. I cross-referenced all the inputs and results with the latest long-range scans of planets we’ve pinged with the artifact while looking for Shedai Conduits.”

The console loaded the data card, and its display changed to show an interactive star map. “This is what we found.” He tapped the icon for one of the star systems. What appeared was an image of fiery debris scattered in space. “Every time we’ve used the artifact to ping a planet that turned out to harbor a Shedai Conduit, the planet has exploded.”

Eyes wide, Marcus parroted, “Exploded?”

“Complete geothermal self-destruction,” Xiong said. “Over the past two months, we’ve destroyed eleven planets without even knowing it. And if I hadn’t shut down today’s experiment, we’d have raised the toll to an even dozen.”

Marcus covered her mouth with one hand, as if she could hold back the horror that welled up inside her. “Oh, my God,” she muttered. She looked up at the artifact, which was locked inside the experiment chamber. “What isthat thing?”

Xiong shrugged. “Right now, my best guess is it’s some kind of doomsday weapon for attacking the Shedai’s interstellar network of Conduits.” He stared at the crystalline dodecahedron. “If I know Admiral Nogura, his next question’ll be: Can it be used as a weapon against the Shedai?”

She looked at Xiong. “Can it?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “All I can tell you is we have to be a lot more careful from now on—because that thing’s Armageddon waiting to happen.”

29

July 30, 2267

Haniff Jackson lunged for the ball as it bounced hard less than a foot behind the short line. He swung his racquet as he dived, but caught nothing but air.

The ball struck the floor a second time and ricocheted off the back wall. Jackson slammed to the deck with a pained grunt.

His opponent gave the racquet tied to her wrist a fast twirl and flashed a cocky grin in his direction. “Thirteen–six,” Desai said. “Are you sure you’ve played racquetball before?”

“Yes,” Jackson said. His entire body was drenched in sweat. Beads of perspiration fell from the tip of his nose as he pushed himself up from the floor.

Desai scooped up the ball from the floor and walked back toward the court’s service zone. As she passed Jackson, she asked in a sweetly mocking tone, “Do you need a time-out?”

“I’m fine,” he said. Flexing his arms to push through the pain of his abraded elbows, he added, “Serve when ready.” He rolled his head in a circle to release the tension in his neck, then settled into his stance for another rally.

The petite JAG officer faced the front wall and lifted her racquet. With her left hand she released the ball and let it bounce once. As it returned to its drop-height and seemed to hang for the tiniest fraction of a second, Desai swung in a blur and swatted it. The sharp pop of contact was still echoing off the walls as the ball returned on an almost straight-line trajectory—and hit Jackson in the face.

A red flash filled his vision. When it cleared, he was lying on his back, looking up at Desai. “Time-out,” he said.