On the negative side, the police chief was rather eloquently arguing the position that this incident was too ontologically important for city officials to handle and that federal assistance should be sought. While news of the incident had been reported by wire to the national news services, it was apparently not being taken seriously in the absence of concrete evidence. The Lirhten military was monitoring the reports in case they were proven legitimate, but was currently on alert due to tensions with a neighboring nation-state and had not assigned the situation a high priority. Had this world been a generation more advanced, with the capacity for live video broadcasting, the situation would have been rather worse. However, the police chief was proposing that photographic evidence and eyewitnesses be flown by propeller-driven aircraft to the regional capital in order to persuade the government to supply soldiers, diplomats, and philosophers to address the crisis. If that happened, it would worsen the Prime Directive violation. If Tuvok could end this situation while it remained isolated and leave no physical evidence behind, the incident would likely become a local legend and have no global effect. But if a major government gained proof of alien life, the contamination would be far worse. Moreover, given the current tensions between Lirht and its neighbor, dividing the attention of the Lirhten military could weaken their position and lead to the conquest of their nation. It would probably not be a very bloody conquest, but it would be a major political change caused by a Starfleet presence on the planet, and that was unacceptable.
The police chief was close to winning the debate, leaving Tuvok no choice but to act. “Rig the warp core to emit a magneton pulse,” he ordered Krotine, whose years aboard an S.C.E. vessel had given her more engineering experience than the others on his team. “It should be sufficient to knock out the power systems citywide and prevent them from summoning outside help.”
“But what about the hospital?” Ensign Hriss asked. “What if Counselor Troi needs that power?”
“The hospital should have an emergency generator,” he told her. “Failing that, Starfleet equipment should be unaffected.”
“And if the hospital does shut down,” Chief Dennisar opined in his deep voice, “maybe that will make Ree abandon the place, come out in the open.”
“Unlikely,” Tuvok told the hulking Orion. “Doctor Ree is a resourceful individual, and he clearly feels the hospital is the safest place for his patient. He will adapt rather than retreat.”
“Predators don’t like taking unnecessary risks,” Hriss observed; as a predator herself, the Caitian spoke from experience. “They tend to retreat when faced with unexpected opposition.”
“As a rule, yes. But I believe Ree is in the paternal guardian mode of a Pahkwa-thanh male. In that mode, the survival of the child overrides individual safety. His instinct will be to stand his ground.”
Just as Elieth stood his ground to protect the people of Deneva,he thought. Just as I would have stood my ground to protect him…if only I could have.He understood very well how Ree thought right now. And he would be just as ruthless in protecting Counselor Troi and her child, if Ree forced him to.
“Emitting the pulse,” Krotine announced. Outside the viewport, Tuvok saw the city lights flare and go dark. Moments later, faint lights returned at a few key facilities with emergency power, including the hospital below.
“Take us down,” Tuvok said. “Can we get a transporter lock on any of our personnel?”
Krotine shook her cherry-tressed head. “No, sir. There’s a jamming field being generated by the heavy shuttle. We can’t beam in either.”
“Very well. Douse all external lights and bring us in as stealthily as possible. We shall make our way on foot.”
TITAN
“The situation is worse than we thought,” Melora told Vale and the others in the observation lounge.
“Naturally,” Vale said. “Because things have just been going sowell this week.”
Melora waited, but rather than saying more, Vale nodded, signaling her to continue. “It turns out the barophilic life Cethente discovered in the saltwater dynamo layer has more influence on the life up above than we initially thought,” the science officer went on. “In two ways. First, it turns out that a lot of the subtle patterns we read in the dynamo layer’s field were actually generated by the barophiles’ communication. It’s the disruption to the barophiles’ life cycle, caused by the exotic radiation in the infalling asteroid dust, that’s altering the planetary magnetic field, and that’s what’s stirring up the surface life.” It was odd to start referring to the oceangoing life of this planet, even that living in the deeps kilometers down, as “surface life.” But a world like this forced one to redefine one’s parameters.
“Symbiosis,” Keru observed with a touch of Trill irony. “The life up above is feeling the pain of the life below.”
“You’re more right than you know, Ranul. There’s a deeper symbiosis as well.” She moved to the wall screen and called up an image of several tiny arthropod forms, magnified thousands of times. “These are bathyplankton—the deep-sea zooplankton that Cethente sampled in the intermediate layers of the ocean, even deeper than we’d sampled them before. As you’ll recall, we were wondering why they would exist at such depths when there’s no sunlight or food to sustain them. Well, Eviku and Chamish figured that out.”
She altered the display to show the creatures alternating between two modes. “It turns out the bathyplankton have a dual biochemistry. Their life functions are based on two distinct types of organic molecules. One is the ordinary type found in the surface life and most carbon-based life forms. The other is the type found in the barophiles. At low pressures, normal life processes operate and the barophile molecules are inert, just part of their structural bracing, which is why we didn’t register the bathyplankton’s dual life cycle before. Near the surface, they consume organic nutrients and use photosynthesis to store solar energy—making them as much phytoplankton as zooplankton.
“But eventually, if they don’t get eaten, gravity and convection currents pull them into the depths. As they sink further, their normal enzymes stop working, and they fall dormant. But then, when they get down to the dynamo layer, the pressure and temperature become great enough for their barophile biochemistry to become active.”