Sleepers — Part 1

Ship’s Log — Security Division Stardate 3141.9. The signal was older than everybody in the duty room. Mercer learned that from Hale, who learned it from somebody in communications, who apparently learned it by staring at a screen until it confessed. “Morse code,” Hale said. Rainer looked up from her coffee. “Bullshit.” “Morse code.” “Nobody uses Morse code.” “Somebody did.” Ox was sitting at the far end of the table peeling the wrapper off something that crinkled every time he touched it. He stopped. “What’s Morse code?” Everybody looked at him. Ox looked back. “What?” Hale opened his mouth. Kane, without looking up from the duty roster, said, “Don’t.” Hale closed it. Mercer leaned forward. “So what’s sending it?” “That,” Hale said, “is the interesting part.” Rainer groaned. “He said interesting.” “I did.” “That’s how people die.” “That’s how people learn.” “Same thing on this ship.” Kane signed the roster and set the stylus down. The room got quieter without anybody deciding it should. “Ship,” Kane said. “Adrift. Old. Earth design.” Mercer waited. Kane didn’t add anything. “How old?” Mercer asked. Kane looked at him. “Old enough the people who built it are dead.” “That’s most ships.” “Then you understand.” Rainer smiled into her mug. Mercer sat back. He was learning. Slowly. But learning. The bridge called it a derelict. The rumor mill called it a ghost ship. The rumor mill had better taste. By the time the Enterprise came alongside it, half the crew had seen it on some monitor somewhere and the other half were pretending they hadn’t been trying to. Mercer saw it on the big tactical display in Security Operations. It didn’t look like a starship. Not the way Mercer understood starships. It looked like something a child might build if the child had only heard starships described by somebody who didn’t like them very much. Long. Blunt. Segmented. Lights burning along a hull that should have been dark two centuries ago. “Jesus,” Rainer said. Hale was already reading. “DY-100 class.” “Is that supposed to mean something?” “It means it’s old.” “We covered old.” “Late twentieth century.” Hale scrolled. “Registry says S.S. Botany Bay.” “Pretty name,” Rainer said. “It was a penal colony.” “Less pretty.” Hale kept reading. “Late twentieth century,” he repeated, in case anybody had missed the important part. That got the room’s attention. Mercer stared at the screen. “That’s not possible.” “And yet,” Hale said, “there it is.” Ox squinted at the display. “How’d it get way out here?” “Slowly,” Kane said. Ox considered that. “Fair.” Mercer kept staring. Twentieth century. His grandmother used to talk about the twentieth century like it was a bad neighborhood. Wars. Famines. Men with too many weapons and not enough sense. People who wanted to fix the world and broke it instead. Somebody from that century had built this. Pointed it at the stars. And let go. “Life signs?” Rainer asked. The communications specialist at the next console glanced over his shoulder. “Faint.” The room changed again. Not loud. Just tighter. “Faint how?” Kane asked. “Faint like they’re barely there, Sergeant Major. Like a heartbeat every few minutes.” Nobody said anything. Rainer set her coffee down. That was how Mercer knew it was serious. Kane put them on the transporter room. “Landing party’s going over,” he said in the corridor. “Captain. Doctor McCoy. Mister Scott.” Hale frowned. “No security?” “No security.” “That’s—” “The captain’s decision.” Hale stopped talking. Mercer noticed that. Hale argued with everybody. Hale did not argue with the captain’s decision in a corridor. “And somebody from history,” Kane added. Rainer looked at him. “Somebody from history?” “Lieutenant McGivers. Ship’s historian.” “We have a ship’s historian?” “Apparently.” “Since when?” “Since before you stopped reading the crew manifest.” “I never started.” “I know.” Ox walked beside Mercer with his hands in his pockets. “What’s a historian do on a starship?” “History,” Hale said. “Out here?” “There’s history everywhere.” Ox looked down the corridor. Clean bulkheads. Clean deck. A yeoman hurrying past with a stack of padds. “Not much.” Rainer laughed. Hale didn’t. The transporter room was cold. It was always cold. Mercer had a theory that somebody in engineering kept it that way deliberately so people would stop loitering in it. He had not shared the theory with anyone because the last time he’d shared a theory, Rainer had repeated it at breakfast and Hale had explained why it was wrong for eleven minutes. Kane stood near the door. Hale took the console side. Rainer leaned against the bulkhead beside the platform in a way that looked casual and absolutely was not. Mercer had learned to read that lean. It meant she could reach her phaser faster than anybody in the room and wanted everybody to think she couldn’t be bothered. Ox took the corner. Mercer took the spot nobody else had taken. That was usually how it worked. The landing party came in. Mercer had seen the captain before. Everybody had. You didn’t serve on the Enterprise without learning what Kirk looked like walking fast. Shoulders forward. Eyes already somewhere else. Like the room he was in had already been dealt with and he was thinking about the next one. Doctor McCoy followed him complaining about something. Mister Scott followed McCoy carrying equipment and looking like Christmas had come early. Then the historian. Lieutenant Marla McGivers. Mercer had never seen her before. She was younger than he expected. Dark hair. Careful posture. She looked at the transporter platform the way some people looked at the edge of a cliff. Not afraid. Just aware of it. She glanced at the security detail as she passed. At Kane. At Rainer. Then at Mercer. Then away. Rainer watched her step onto the platform. “Huh,” she said under her breath. Mercer glanced over. “What?” “Nothing.” “You said huh.” “People say huh.” “You don’t.” Rainer smiled slightly. “Shut the fuck up, Rook.” Hale, at the console, without looking up: “That’s my line.” “You weren’t using it.” Kane looked at both of them. They stopped. The captain gave the order. The landing party dissolved into light. The room got very quiet. They waited. That was most of the job. Mercer had stopped resenting it. Mostly. Hale monitored the channel. Static, then voices, then static. The captain. Mister Scott talking about the ship with the kind of affection most men reserved for dogs. McCoy saying something sour. Then Scott again. “Captain, it’s a sleeper ship.” Mercer looked up. So did everybody else. Hale raised the volume one notch. Nobody told him not to. The voices came through in pieces. Suspended animation. Cryogenic units. Rows of them. Men and women. Some of the units had failed. Some hadn’t. Mercer felt something crawl along the back of his neck. He thought about it. Rows of people. Asleep. For two hundred years. Floating in the dark while everybody they had ever known grew old and died and was forgotten. While their countries changed names. While their wars ended. While people stopped using Morse code. “Christ,” Rainer said quietly. Ox shifted in his corner. “They dreaming?” Hale looked at him. “I doubt it.” “Hope not,” Ox said. “Long time to have a bad one.” Nobody laughed. Mercer looked at the empty transporter pads. Two hundred years. He’d been aboard the Enterprise for less than one and some days it felt like a lifetime. The channel crackled. The voices changed. Faster. Mister Scott calling out readings. A unit activating. The doctor’s voice going sharp and professional. “He’s reviving—” Kane straightened. Just slightly. Mercer saw it. So did Rainer. She came off the wall. “Sergeant Major?” Kane was listening. The voices kept coming. “Pulse rising.” “Bones, can you—” “I’m a doctor, not a—” Static. Then McCoy again. Different now. Urgent. “We’ve got to get him to sickbay. Now.” Kane turned to Hale. “Notify sickbay.” Hale was already doing it. “Rainer. Mercer.” They both straightened. “Sickbay. Outer door.” Rainer frowned. “Guard duty?” “Guard duty.” “For a corpsicle?” Kane looked at her. Rainer held up both hands. “Sickbay. Outer door. Got it.” Mercer looked at Kane. “What are we guarding against?” Kane looked at the transporter pads. Something in his face had gone still. Mercer had seen that look once before. In a maintenance corridor. Right before a relay bypass tried to kill them. “I don’t know yet,” Kane said. That was worse than any answer he could have given. The platform shimmered. Five figures materialized. The captain. Scott. McGivers. McCoy, kneeling, one hand on the chest of the man lying across the pads between them. Mercer looked at the man. He couldn’t stop looking. Something about him was wrong. Not wrong like injured. Not wrong like dead. Wrong like a predator in a pen. He was dark-haired, broad through the chest, dressed in something that looked like it had been designed by people who wanted their clothes to make a point. His face was gray with cold. His lips had no color at all. He looked like a dead man. He didn’t look like a weak one. “Move,” McCoy snapped. Medical personnel came through the door with a gurney. Mercer stepped back. Ox stepped forward and lifted one end of the man before anybody asked. The medical technician blinked at him. Ox didn’t seem to notice. “Heavy,” Ox said. “He’s frozen,” the technician said. Ox looked down at the man. “Nope,” he said. “He’s just heavy.” McCoy was already moving. The gurney followed. The captain watched it go. Then turned and looked at the security detail. At Kane. For a second, Mercer thought the captain was going to say something. He didn’t. He nodded once. Kane nodded back. Then the captain was gone too, Scott and McGivers following, Scott still talking about engines that hadn’t been built since before his grandfather’s grandfather was born. McGivers paused at the door. She looked back. Not at the security detail. At the corridor where the gurney had gone. Rainer watched her. This time Mercer didn’t ask. Sickbay’s outer door was nobody’s favorite post. People came in hurt. People came out quieter. In between, security stood outside like furniture and listened to sounds they were trained not to react to. Rainer took the left side. Mercer took the right. For ten minutes, nothing happened. Then fifteen. Then twenty. A nurse went in. A nurse came out. A crewman from engineering came by with a burned hand and an expression of profound embarrassment. He looked at the two armed security personnel flanking the door. “Is this about the hand?” Rainer stared at him. “What did you do?” “Nothing.” “Then it’s not about the hand.” He went inside. Mercer looked at her. “That was mean.” “That was efficient.” “He looked terrified.” “He burned his hand on a plasma conduit. He should be terrified. Of himself.” Mercer tried not to smile. Failed. The corridor emptied again. Rainer leaned her head back against the bulkhead. “You know who used to make us do this?” Mercer glanced over. “Do what?” “Stand outside sickbay. Every time somebody came aboard we didn’t know.” “Kane?” Rainer shook her head. “Before Kane ran the board.” Mercer waited. Rainer looked down the corridor. Something in her face changed. Not much. Just enough. “The old chief,” she said. “Who?” “Before your time, Rook. Before the captain was the captain.” “Pike’s chief?” Rainer nodded. “La’an.” Mercer had heard the name. Everybody in Security Division had heard the name. Usually from somebody older, usually late at night, usually in the tone people used for weather they’d survived. “What was she like?” Rainer thought about it longer than Mercer expected. “Scary.” “Scary like Kane?” “No.” Rainer frowned. “Kane’s scary because he’s seen everything. She was scary because she expected everything.” “What’s the difference?” “Kane walks into a room and knows what’s going to happen.” Rainer tapped the wall behind her head. “She walked into a room and already knew three ways it could go wrong, two ways out, and which person was lying.” “That sounds like you.” Rainer looked at him. Mercer immediately regretted it. Then she smiled. Not her usual smile. Something smaller. “Who do you think taught me?” Mercer didn’t have an answer for that. Rainer looked back at the sickbay door. “She had a rule,” she said. “Unknown guest comes aboard, you don’t treat him like a guest.” “What do you treat him like?” “Like the most dangerous thing on the ship. Until he proves he isn’t.” Mercer looked at the door. Inside, a man who had been asleep for two centuries was waking up. “Kane still uses it,” Rainer said. “Doesn’t call it her rule. But it’s hers.” “Is that why we’re here?” Rainer didn’t answer right away. Then: “Yeah.” The door slid open. Doctor McCoy stepped out, rubbing the side of his neck. He looked at the two of them. Then at the phasers. He looked tired. And something else. Mercer couldn’t name it. “He’s awake,” McCoy said. Rainer straightened. “Problem, Doctor?” McCoy looked back through the door. For a long second he didn’t answer. His hand stayed on his neck. Right where somebody might hold a blade. “No,” he said finally. “No problem.” He walked away down the corridor. Rainer watched him go. Then she looked at Mercer. Neither of them said anything. They didn’t have to. Inside sickbay, very quietly, somebody laughed. It was not a sound Mercer ever wanted to hear again.