Faulwell had gotten the translation algorithm to a point where normal conversation with the Shanial was possible. The rendering was only approximate, not to mention delayed, since Bart was filtering it through his tricorder and modifying some of the translator program’s word and grammar choices. “Trust me, it’s better this way,” he’d insisted. “Our grammars are so different that a more literal rendering would just be too awkward. Good translation is more about capturing the overall sense of the material, choosing whatever phrasing conveys that sense best even if the specific words are very different.”

“Come clean, Bart,” Pattie had joked. “You’re just trying to give yourself more to do.”

Still, Faulwell’s system seemed to work, though Gomez was concerned about what might be lost in the translation. “We never knew of other worlds,” Matriarch Varethli told them. “The ceiling hid them from us.”

“Ceiling?” asked O’Brien. “Have they always lived indoors? No, that’s silly, how do you evolve indoors?” He corrected himself. “Underground, then?”

“I’m not sure the word came through right,” Faulwell said. After some discussion with the Shanial, he reported, “I think she means clouds. Sounds like their world has a dense, constantly clouded atmosphere. They couldn’t see the stars.”

“But you know about the stars now? About space travel?” Gomez asked.

“Yes,” said Designer Rohewi, the darker-hued male who was apparently Varethli’s partner, though whether professionally, politically, or personally was unclear. “The Nachri came through the clouds. We learned from them that other worlds existed, that vessels moved between them.”

“But they didn’t just bring knowledge.”

“No,” Varethli told them, her four arms (upper legs?) twitching in agitation. “They killed many Shanial. They sought to align us in one direction.”

“Sorry,” Faulwell interposed, “I think that’s a metaphor for trying to conquer them.”

“They wanted our technology,” Rohewi continued. “We and they did not progress the same way. They, like you, used subspace for travel, to find new worlds for their growing population. Our population grew as well, but we made our own new territory by creating subspace pockets.”

Rohewi, apparently the lead engineer of the Shanial and innovator of much of their subspace technology, began to explain the specifics. It wasn’t long before the engineers caught on to the nature of the microwarp bubbles. “Like a subspace compression,” O’Brien grimaced. “Just great. I’m tiny again. I hate it when that happens.”

“But how could they have warp technology without spaceflight?” Corsi asked.

“I can see how they might just have a knack for it,” Faulwell mused. “With their flexible sense of direction and movement, their ability to reconcile opposites, I bet they have an intuitive understanding of the subspace dimensions, the way they’re curled up inside space and vice versa at the same time.” The others stared at him in surprise. “What? I’m a linguist surrounded by engineers. I listen to the jargon and pick up the meaning.”

Apparently there was a whole network of microbubbles, externally encased within stabilizing crystals, yet connected to each other through subspace wormholes, one of which the team had passed through to reach this city, the hub of the network. “The Nachri wanted the microbubbles as a weapon,” Rohewi explained, “to smuggle armies and fleets, or destroy cities through their reexpansion.”

“We would not do this,” Varethli said. “To destroy those you disagree with, rather than finding a new way forward for both, is insane.”

Gomez smiled. As Bart had said, their multivalued logic kept them from seeing things in black-and-white terms. If two sides clashed over something, they could just reorient their perspectives and negotiate a settlement. It apparently made for a very peaceful society.

“We sought a common orientation with them, but they would not change direction. The Nachri began to destroy our world! They thought it would make us do what they wanted. But this was a direction we could not move in. So we turned inward. We encased what we could within subspace pockets, intending to hide within them until the threat was gone.”

“So you’ve been living in these pockets for two hundred years?” Sonya asked.

“No,” replied the designer. “Resources and power are finite. And we knew our world would take millennia to recover. We compressed the time dimension as well.”

“You mean…for you, hardly any time has passed?”

“Days.”

Gomez’s eyes widened. That meant that the devastation these people described, the destruction of their entire world, was not something that they’d studied in the history books—it was a firsthand experience, the memory still fresh. Something was indeed being lost in the translation—the anguish and grief the Shanial must be enduring. She couldn’t read their body language, so she’d had no idea. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “We, too, have suffered many great losses in recent times. Though nothing as great as what you’ve lost. I…” She trailed off. She had no idea what she could say to them that could sound remotely meaningful.

“Gratitude,” Varethli said simply.

“But the course has altered,” Rohewi said. “Time is uncompressed again. The emergence of one pocket back to the outer universe has reconnected the network to normal timeflow. And clearly we are not on Shanial anymore.”

“What caused the pocket to emerge?” O’Brien asked.

“An abrupt power leakage into subspace weakened the stabilizing crystal. We do not know the cause.”

“May I take a look at your readings? I have an idea about that.”

Once O’Brien got a feel for their readouts, it didn’t take long. “Just as I thought—looks like they were hit with the Breen’s energy-dampers. These crystals we’re in must’ve already been in San Francisco when the attack happened.”

“Probably in the museum,” Abramowitz said.

“My God,” Gomez said. “How many of these crystals were there?”

“We only managed to generate sixteen,” Rohewi replied.

“And have the others suffered similar power drains?”

“Yes. We are searching for a way to reverse them, with no success.”

“We believed it was a Nachri attack,” Varethli added, “which is why we reacted defensively to your entry. But now we see it is you who needs defense.” She paused, dealing with unreadable emotions. “We mourn the loss of life our accidental emergence caused.”

“Not your fault,” O’Brien assured them. “We’re all just delayed victims of a war that already ended. That’s the way war always is—goes on killing long after the fighting’s supposed to have stopped.”

“But the tragedy will be far greater,” Rohewi said, “if we cannot halt the power drain of the other crystals.”

“You said it,” Pattie chirped. “If a complex this size underwent instant reexpansion, the blast would totally destroy San Francisco—and blow enough dust and smoke into the stratosphere to cause a global ice age.”

“Wait,” said Rohewi, studying his readouts. “The other crystals show anomalous readings.”

“Are they about to rupture?” Gomez asked.

Rohewi absorbed the data for a moment. “Borderline, but holding. They seem to be in motion, but something from outside is damping its effects.”

Abramowitz turned to Gomez. “Do you think Scotty and the others have found them?”

But Gomez addressed the designer. “You said the other crystals. Not this one?”

“No. We remain stationary.”

“We need to get in contact with our people right away. Can you arrange that?” she asked the Shanial.

“You must return to the facility you came here from,” Rohewi told her. “Sending a signal through our warp field would require altering its geometry, and it is too tenuous to risk that.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

“May we accompany?” Varethli asked. “Perhaps by combining our knowledge we can solve this crisis. We have only just discovered the richness of the universe beyond our clouds—it would be tragic to die before getting to explore it.”

“It’s always tragic to die,” Gomez muttered. “All right, come on.”

The matriarch and the designer came up alongside her as she strode toward the exit. Despite their bulk, they made excellent time, and she had to jog to keep up. She tweaked the antigrav suit a bit to reduce her weight some more. “Is there really a Federation of hundreds of worlds, coexisting in peace?” Varethli asked.

“Yes, there is.”

“And all these peoples are different?”

“Well, most of them are humanoid like us, but yes, there are many different kinds.”

“Amazing. When we entered these pockets, all we knew of was the Nachri and their empire. Now there is a great union of worlds in which the Nachri play no part. While we have locked ourselves away, standing still in time, so much has happened, so much has changed. Perhaps we were too hasty to cut ourselves off from the universe. It is not as dark a place as we had thought.”

Gomez chose not to argue the point. She simply fell back to the rear of the group, and let Faulwell and Abramowitz monopolize the Shanial. But soon O’Brien fell back alongside her. “The gravsuit working okay, Commander? I saw you fiddling with it earlier.”

“It’s fine, Chief. Thanks.” She let him see the readouts on the wrist panel, knowing a fellow engineer would need hard data.

O’Brien nodded approvingly at the readouts, but kept pace with her. “It’s always something, isn’t it, Commander? Goes with the job, I guess. Do well fixing one crisis, they send you to fix the next one. Some reward, huh?”

“It never ends,” Gomez murmured, more to herself than to him.

“Be glad it doesn’t,” O’Brien said, catching her eyes intently.

“What?”

The chief fidgeted. “I don’t mean to intrude, Commander…but I’ve known people who…well, after suffering a loss, or a bad crisis, they…maybe were too ready to see it end. To give up.”

“‘To take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them’? Is that what you mean?” Gomez smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry, Chief. I’m not suicidal. I’m just….” She searched for a word. “Stuck. I feel like the Shanial—frozen in place while the universe is going by around me. I want to get back in motion again, but I just don’t see how.”

“Sure you do. Just take one step forward, then the next, and so on. You’re just not letting yourself do it.”

“And what would you know about it?”

He shrugged. “Been there. I once…well, I once went to prison for twenty years.”

Gomez stared. “Chief…I haven’t known you twenty years.”

“It was a virtual prison—twenty years of memories dumped into my brain in a few hours. But it felt real. By the end of those few hours, I was a changed man. I’d gotten used to thinking I’d lost everything. And I…well, let’s just say I sank into some pretty deep despair.

“Then I came out, and I found the life I’d lost was still there. I could have it back—my wife, my daughter, my friends, my career, my youth, everything. But the despair still had its grip on me, and so I didn’t reach out to take it. I even—” He broke off.

Gomez shared an understanding look with him. “I guess it got pretty rough for a moment or two.”

“Yeah,” he acknowledged. “Anyway, well, I’ve never had much use for headshrinkers, but I have to admit, Counselor Telnorri did help me understand how depression works—how it tricks you into thinking there’s no hope, blinds you to everything you’ve got in your favor. And I realized something else, too—life’s short, and you never know how long happiness will last. So you need to make the most of every moment you have. Don’t let yourself miss opportunities—don’t let yourself fall into a rut, or worse.”

“That’s just it,” Gomez said. “I thought I’d learned that already, after Sarindar. It was even that decision that made me…” She sighed. “Made me start things up with Kieran again.”

“So you tried it that way, and it ended badly. It’s no wonder you’d have second thoughts after that. But let me ask you something, Commander: Did it end that way because of anything you did wrong?”

“No,” Gomez had to admit. “There was nothing I could’ve done.”

“There you go. The problem wasn’t in your approach—so if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

He makes it sound so simple, a part of Gomez scoffed. But she was beginning to recognize that voice for what it was. That’s because it is simple, she told herself. You can’t succeed if you don’t try—so you might as well try.

She gazed up ahead at their newfound friends, who were chatting enthusiastically with Faulwell and Abramowitz, pumping them for information about the galaxy. “Look at the Shanial,” she said. “They lost their whole world, just days ago by their count. And yet they’re excited about all the new worlds they’ve suddenly discovered.”

“I guess it’s like Mr. Faulwell said. They don’t see much difference between backward and forward. So a setback can become an advance, with just a little shift in perspective.”

“Do you think humans can learn that?”

O’Brien smiled encouragingly. “I’ve seen it happen.”

“Are we there yet?” Stevens asked.

He, Scotty, and Tev were aboard shuttlecraft Haley(on loan from Starfleet HQ), transporting the Cabochons to Vesta Station in the asteroid belt. The da Vinci could’ve gotten them there faster, but Scotty had insisted on a shuttle; not only would it mean fewer people were at risk, but the shuttle had less mass and fewer energy sources to jostle their microwarp bubbles. The starship was escorting the shuttle, but from a comfortable distance—just within transporter range, in the slim hope of being able to save the crew if the crystals ruptured.

Even though Tev had done most of the work designing the stasis-field apparatus that now encased the Cabochons and cushioned them against external stimuli, the Tellarite had insisted on sitting in the front of the shuttlecraft alongside Scotty, relegating Stevens to the back, and incidentally putting him right next to what were currently the deadliest objets d’art in the known galaxy. Of course it would only make about a femtosecond’s difference in how soon he’d be killed, but it was the principle of the thing.

So Stevens had decided that if Tev was going to stick him in the backseat like a little kid, he might as well act the part. He was tired of being at a disadvantage, letting Tev make him angry and frustrated. It was time to take back some control, redefine the terms, and start giving as good as he got. He couldn’t fight back openly without getting himself cashiered out of Starfleet; but there were always passive forms of resistance, and humor was one of the most tried and true. If Tev took himself so blasted seriously, then Stevens’s best option was to stop taking him seriously at all.

Besides…it’s what Duff would’ve done.

“Are we there yet?” he asked again, for the fifth time. “I’m hungry.”

“Quiet back there, or I’ll turn this thing around,” Scotty shot back with a grin.

“We can’t risk going faster, or the engine emissions will overwhelm the stasis,” Tev said, apparently missing the joke. Well, to be fair, he couldn’t be expected to know hoary Earth clichés. “At this rate we’re several hours from Vesta.” He turned to skewer Stevens with his deep-set eyes. “So perhaps you should consider taking a nap.”

Ouch! Stevens realized he may have underestimated his opponent. Well, that just made it more interesting.

As soon as they emerged from the hatch, Gomez hit her combadge. “Gomez to Scott.”

“Commander Gomez, this is Director Iskander,” came the reply. “Where have you been? Is your team all right?”

“The team’s okay, sir, but we have an emergency. Where’s Scotty?”

“Captain Scott is escorting the alien artifacts off-planet. We’ve discovered there’s a risk—”

“We know, sir, that’s the emergency. The crystal containing the largest Shanial city is still on Earth somewhere, and they can’t stabilize it. If it reemerges like the first one, San Francisco’s off the map and Earth becomes another Cardassia. We need to find that missing crystal, fast!”

“Wait. You’ve been with the Shanial?”

“We have their leader and their chief engineer with us now.”

“Are you able to talk freely?”

“What? Of course, sir. There’s something else, you have to warn the Nachri off. They lied to us; they invaded the Shanial for their technology, destroyed their world when they refused. They must be trying to steal it again.”

“And the Shanial told you this?”

“Who else?”

“Commander, it’s their word against the Nachri’s, and they’re the ones who blew a fresh hole in San Francisco. I want you to place them under arrest.”

“Sir, that’s not necessary. They’re not the enemy. Please, warn off the Nachri. At least let us talk to Captain Scott and our people.”

“These Shanial are a deceptive people, Commander—you’re letting yourself be swayed by them. Bring them in for interrogation so we can evaluate their claims.”

“We don’t have time! We need to work with them to stop the deterioration, before it’s too late.”

At that moment, a division of armed agents rounded the bend in the corridor—Federation Security, not Starfleet. “Cooperate with the agents, Commander,” Iskander instructed. “Even if this threat is real, I don’t trust the Shanial to be in control of this power.”

Gomez cursed to herself. “What was that, sir? I’m losing your signal, it must be the subspace instability.” Catching on, O’Brien started making a kkhhhhhh noise. She glared to make him stop—not only was it entirely lame, but it was threatening to make her giggle. She just cut off the badge. “Come on, back inside!”

“What about Scotty and the rest?”

“Good question,” Gomez said grimly.

“Da Vinci to Haley,” came Gold’s voice over the comm.

“Haley. Scott here.”

“Folks, we’ve been hailed by the Nachri Defense Fleet. They’re in-system, and volunteering to have their lead ship join the escort.”

“Tell ’em to keep their distance,” Scotty warned. “We don’t want any unnecessary emissions clutterin’ up our space.”

“But we could use their help at Vesta,” said Stevens. “They’ve dealt with these Shanial before.”

“Aye, so they say,” the Scotsman answered skeptically.

Tev said, “It might be wise to have another set of transporters for backup.”

“Like that’s going to matter. Och, very well, they can approach to maximum transporter range. Gently! Tev—any chance o’ raising shields?”

The Tellarite’s stubby fingers were already at work on his console. “If I ramp them up gradually enough. Stevens, keep a close eye on that stasis field. If it fluctuates more than—”

“I know what to look for. Sir.”

“You’d better.”

“Watch out,” cried Gold, “they’ve fired something!” Moments later, the shuttle rocked, and Stevens’s heart tried to abandon ship through his throat as he watched the readouts fluctuate.

“My God,” Scotty gasped. “Shuttlecraft to Nachri ship,” he hailed desperately. “We surrender! Hold yer fire! Repeat, hold your fire!”

“Scotty, what are you doing?” cried Stevens. “We’re in Sol System, there are hundreds of starships around to defend us!”

“One ship or a thousand, it doesn’t matter—they don’t dare fire, not around the Cabochons. Those Nachri have us with our britches down. We have to surrender!”

The da Vinci shuddered under another hammer blow. The Nachri had attacked them at the same time as the shuttle, and were continuing their assault even after the shuttle’s surrender. “What are they firing, anyway?” Gold demanded.

“Some kind of kinetic missiles,” Shabalala answered.

“They’re shooting cannonballs at us?”

“At eighty percent of lightspeed. They hit with incredible force. And they’re hard to track at those speeds, even with subspace sensors.” Another blow interrupted him, but Gold didn’t need further explanation. Few starships or torpedoes traveled much faster than a quarter lightspeed in normal space—relativistic effects made it troublesome, and it was more efficient just to go to warp. And natural objects rarely reached a fraction of such speeds. So the sensors weren’t really calibrated for this.

“Can we return fire?”

“I can’t lock on for sure,” Shabalala told him. “They’re jamming sensors, and using some kind of decoy drones, giving off the same emissions as their ship.” Before the attack, Shabalala had been confident in his threat assessment, reporting that the Nachri’s shields were downright primitive, a simple point-defense system supplementing their polarized hull plates. Now he and Gold were learning the hard way that their own technology wasn’t really superior to the Nachri’s, just specialized in a different direction—and therefore it had its own limitations. Gold would make sure the crew remembered that lesson in the future—provided there was one.

“We can’t fire anyway,” Shabalala added. “The discharge could set off the Cabochons.”

“Damn. That’s what the Nachri are counting on,” said Gold. “They’ll keep firing until we retreat—so we have to retreat.”