Chapter 7 - Whispers From The Deep

Several days later, Jack was again at his desk looking out into space watching the Corps of Engineers work proceed at what seemed an impossible pace. They had already built living areas for themselves and just that morning activated a temporary life support system. The Deltan women were finally off his ship. He wouldn't have to face that temptation.

He noticed the Defiant class Abdiel soar past the Chamberlain. He had wondered when Falco would finally arrive.

Jack turned around and saw Hank Evans and about ten feet behind him, stood Timothy Blackwell.

"What is it, Hank?"

"Seems our science officer has something he wants to show you."

Jack leaned back in his chair. "Is it urgent?"

Hank grinned. "Oh, I think you ought to definitely see this."

Jack saw that mischievous twinkle in his eyes that always indicated Hank Evans knew something that was guaranteed to make one's day.

Jack waved Blackwell over. "What do you have, Timothy?"

Blackwell stepped up carrying two PADDs and a large three foot wide transparent sheet with various diagrams and equations on it.

"I've been going over the Cajmians' information about their geothermal power stations and something doesn't add up."

Jack lifted an eyebrow as Blackwell approached the display panel near his desk.

"I've run the numbers more than ten times and either I'm really missing something or the Cajmians are being less than truthful."

Jack turned to see Hank's grin grow even wider than before while the display activated next to Blackwell.

"According to the Cajma Office of Power Resources they produce fourteen percent of their energy from the hydroelectric generators on their sea cities. Most of this is used to run the maintenance systems of each city and therefore not free for lighting, transport, communications, and civilian needs," Blackwell stated as the display changed to show a schematic of a geothermal generator.

Jack nodded. "Okay, we knew that."

Blackwell took a breath. "But sir, when I add up the total power output from all but one of their geothermal generators it's only sixty percent of their energy needs."

"All but one?" Jack asked.

The display next to Blackwell changed to show an overview of a reactor. "The one you flew over the other day accounts for forty-five percent of their total power."

Jack's brow tightened. "How do they get that much out of one reactor?"

Blackwell grinned. "That was what I wondered too. The fact is they don't."

Jack shook his head. "I'm afraid I don't follow."

Blackwell stepped up and pointed at the schematic transparency on the desk. "These are the local geothermal vents in that area and the taps that reactor has into them. It actually produces far less energy than any other reactor the Cajmians have."

"Then where is the energy coming from?"

"You see this set of conduits that go straight down farther into the planet?"

Jack nodded.

"At first I thought they were tapping a deeper geothermal source or went down to the magma, but when I scanned I found nothing. At least at first."

Jack took a deep breath. He hoped Blackwell had something more than an odd geological mystery for him.

"I knew you went over the site so I asked Mr. Evans if he had noticed anything unusual when he piloted the runabout."

Hank stepped up. "I told Tim that all I had seen was the reactor and the small structure next to it."

Jack looked at Hank. "That's all I remember."

Blackwell turned to the display and touched his PADD. On the screen a new image of the site showed nearly fifty small structures around the reactor.

Jack stood to his feet. "Those weren't there before."

"Oh, they were, sir. One week ago when the Venture first arrived they were there, but six hours later they were gone--- moved some hundred kilometers away."

"Why the hell would they move a set of buildings?" Jack asked.

"I did some checking through their records and up to sixty years ago this particular site was under water."

"You're losing me, Mr. Blackwell," Jack said impatiently.

"Sir, sixty years ago the Cajmians were barely beyond an advanced industrial stage of development according to the Kel-j'na. Then at about the same time this reactor went online, their society leaped forward almost two hundred years."

"Have you checked this out with your sources on Kel-j'na, Hank?"

Evans smiled. "Talked to the Prime Minister herself. She confirmed it."

Blackwell walked back to the display which changed to show a side view schematic of the reactor. "I did a complete spectral scan of the reactor and found a null energy field two kilometers below the surface."

Jack gave him a confused look. "A what?"

"It's similar to a static warp shell, but simpler. The achronal boundary of the field effect produces…"

Jack held his hand up. "How could something like that be there?"

Blackwell shook his head. "I haven't figured that out just yet, but the power levels are more than high enough to account for the energy levels this reactor is producing."

Jack walked up to the display and stared at it for a full minute as Blackwell and Hank remained silent.

"There has to be more here for them to go to all this trouble to keep it secret from us," he said.

Blackwell stepped up to Jack. "Those other structures aren't there for power production, Captain. Every day transport convoys leave to a more distant location which we were told was a manufacturing facility, but I can't find evidence that it's anything more than a distribution center."

Jack turned to him. "Giving me an even larger mystery only gets me agitated, Mr. Blackwell."

"Sir, a null energy field located at the bottom of what used to be a sea, that the Cajmians went out of their way to drain sixty years ago and now produces power and goods for them, means they are in possession of a technology far beyond anything the Federation has," Blackwell said.

Jack nodded. "A technology they obviously don't want to share."

He turned to Hank. "If they have something like this, then why all the concern about us protecting them from the Naitr'm? If this really is advanced technology they've dug up, then why not use that and leave us out of their business?"

Hank grinned. "That assumes they've figured this thing out completely. They may just see it as a source of goodies and nothing more. And it might be this very thing they want protection for."

"An advanced power source like this might encourage their neighbors to take special interest in their world," Jack said.

"It may be that the Naitr'm already know about this and that's why they've been such a problem for the Cajmians," Hank replied.

Jack went back to his desk and sat down in his chair. He looked up at Blackwell. "You're sure of your facts on this?"

Jack smiled. "No, I'm convinced. I just want to make sure when I take this to Gann I'm not left swinging in the wind."

***

Jack stood in Gann's Ready Room, stunned.

"We've known about it since the second day after we arrived."

Jack took a deep breath. "Pardon me for asking, sir, but when were you planning on informing me about it?"

"I didn't feel we had enough information just yet. We're still trying to figure out how this null energy field is producing the raw materials they're shipping to their cities."

Jack did his best not to yell, but it was getting harder each moment that sick smile remained on Gann's face.

"Captain Gann, you will be leaving in three days and the Chamberlain will remain for six months. Didn't you think I and my crew needed to be informed about this? And what of their Federation membership? Does the ambassador know about this?"

Gann's smile evaporated. "No, and I'm ordering you not to tell him. At least not yet."

"You plan on just letting them become a Federation member without explaining this?"

Gann stood. "They don't sign the treaty until tomorrow morning."

"That's not much time," Jack said.

"I agree. That's why we're going to act today," Gann replied. "I've called a staff meeting for thirty minutes from now. I want you there along with a couple members of your crew."

***

Jack walked into the main conference room of the Venture and was about to take a seat when he saw Mei-Wan enter the room. He quickly walked up to her.

"You transferred over already?"

Mei-Wan took a deep breath. "No. I'm still not done packing. I got a call twenty minutes ago from Gann. He asked me to do a quick analysis of some scans and to come over for this meeting."

Jack grinned. "Don't take this the wrong way, but why the hell would he want you here?"

Mei-Wan mirrored his grin. "He didn't say, but I'm glad to see you too."

Jack chuckled. "Sorry."

"Don't be," she said as she put her hand on his cheek. "Jack, I won't leave the Chamberlain before we get a chance to say goodbye."

He nodded and was about to say something, but Gann, Olwen Lasas, and K'lremi walked quickly into the room and took their seats at the table.

"We don't have a lot of time, so let's begin," Gann said.

Everyone sat. Mei-Wan took the chair next to Jack.  He realized this was the first time they'd been together in a staff meeting.

"Lieutenant McCall, did your analysis of the power station find anything unusual?" the captain of the Venture asked.

"Yes, sir," Mei-Wan began. She stood to her feet and activated the display screen in the room. A three dimensional diagram of the reactor rotated slowly as she continued. "This particular reactor was recently constructed upon a former sea bed. The stratification of the local terrain indicates it was probably done within the last fifty to seventy years. Scans also indicate a much older structure directly beneath the power station."

As the diagram expanded outward K'lremi spoke, "How much older?"

"Without getting a chance to test the soil directly, which would be difficult since it's a sealed cavern, it's at least millions of years old."

"It's a sealed cavern?" Timothy Blackwell asked.

"Yes."

"Then how are they getting the energy and materials out? They only recently acquired transporter technology."

Mei-Wan shook her head. "I don't know, but there are large artifacts surrounding the cavern. They appear to be statues of a form I've never seen before."

The display changed to show a twisted non-humanoid form.

"I can't get better resolution than this without a ground scan, but…" The display zoomed out and a distance away from the statues was a larger structure.

Gann's eyes widened. "That is nearly two kilometers underground?"

"Along with the statues, yes, sir," Mei-Wan said. "From the looks of it, I'd say it was a temple of some sort."

Gann turned to Jack. "Any questions for the lieutenant, Captain McCall?"

"No, she's thorough as always, sir."

Gann turned to Mei-Wan. "Thank you, Lieutenant."

She took her seat next to Jack again. Olwen Lasas looked across the table at both Jack and Mei-Wan and smiled.

"Obviously we need more information," Gann said.

"Getting it may be a problem," K'lremi started. "The Cajmians have restricted that airspace and insisted we avoid it."

"Really? That is interesting," Gann said.

"They claim the reactor is having problems."

Gann turned to Jack. "Captain McCall, Commander Lasas has requested an opportunity to check out the Personnel Department aboard the Chamberlain and get a chance to meet the staff."

Jack frowned. Gann had been many things the last several days, but cryptic wasn't one of them. "Sir?"

"She would like you to take her over using a shuttle, in fact a particular runabout," Gann said with a slight grin.

Jack looked at Lasas who smiled. "I hate the transporter," she said.

Jack slowly nodded. "Is that because a transporter can't malfunction and require an emergency landing in a particular area on the surface?"

Gann leaned forward. "If I sent a large team down there, the Cajmians would be certain to raise holy hell, but a shuttlecraft in an emergency situation is a circumstance they're not likely to suspect. I've talked this over with Olwen and she agrees it's unlikely an entire species could be resistant to telepathic probing. My guess is the Chairman is one of the few. If she can get a chance to just be around the Cajmians working at the reactor we should be able to find out what's going on without anyone knowing we're doing it."

Jack took a deep breath. "And if someone does suspect? Say Ambassador Wakernaggle?"

Gann tilted his head slightly to one side. "Then I can claim it was the 'troubled' Captain McCall who once again had snapped."

Mei-Wan turned to look at Gann. She couldn't believe Gann would use Jack like this.

Gann looked directly at her while Jack stared at the table. "Perhaps this sounds unethical to some of you, but tomorrow morning the Cajmians become members of the United Federation of Planets and if what I suspect they're up to is the truth, that cannot be allowed to happen."

He took a deep breath. "I'm asking each one of you at this table to trust me."

"You leave in ten minutes," Gann said. "Dismissed."

Everyone except Gann, Jack, Mei-Wan, and K'lremi left the room.

Mei-Wan stood from her seat and watched Jack for a moment. On her way out, she glared at Gann.

"I'm sorry, Captain, but I have to have an option if things go wrong," Gann said.

Jack didn't lift his gaze from the table. "Tell me something, is this why you and Simmons had me sent out here--- so that if something went wrong, you'd have a fall guy?"

Gann leaned back in his seat. "Was this the plan all along? No. I'm just using a resource at my disposal to achieve the goal at hand, McCall."

He took a deep breath. "I may have to ask a lot of you if things go bad, but it's the very nature of the Federation we're fighting for. If I'm right, the Cajmians can't be allowed to be a part of something more important than you, me, or our careers."

Jack stood and looked at K'lremi. "Did you know about this?"

She didn't look at him. She only nodded.

Jack turned away from her. "I'll do what you ask, sir."

He walked out of the room leaving Gann and his executive officer alone.

***

A minute after the runabout left the Venture its impulse engines went offline and the small craft plummeted into the Cajmian atmosphere. Five minutes after that, Jack gave a convincing performance of a vessel in dire trouble throwing up tons of soil as the craft 'crashed' on the surface.

He and Olwen exited the runabout twenty seconds later and began as any crash survivors would, walking to the nearest sign of habitation which just happened to be the power reactor the officers of both the Venture and Chamberlain had become so concerned about.

"So, you know what it is Gann suspects about the reactor," Jack asked Olwen.

"Yes."

He shook his head as they were about seventy feet away from one of the fifty or so buildings now surrounding the site. "You mind sharing it with me?"

"I'm sorry, Captain McCall, but I'm under orders to say nothing to you or anyone else."

Jack rolled his eyes. "I'm an idiot for agreeing to this."

"Your wife doesn't think you're an idiot."

"Don't be so certain. She knows my idiocy better than anyone," Jack said with a grin.

Olwen smiled. "I know how she felt about you in the conference room earlier."

Jack turned to the Counselor. "It won't matter in another day or two."

"Because she's leaving the Chamberlain?"

Jack nodded and glanced up at the noonday sun.

Commander Lasas shook her head. "What I sensed from her wasn't a simple infatuation. She deeply loves you."

"A lot can change in a year, especially when…" Jack didn't finish.

He stopped walking and pointed ahead. "I think they've found us."

Directly ahead of their position ten heavily armed Cajmians ran toward them, shouting.

Olwen stepped next to Jack. "I just need a few minutes to sense their thoughts. The more we delay the more I can learn and the more the shuttle can continue its scans."

Jack turned to her. "What scans?"

She smiled. "The ones of the entire area being transmitted back to the Venture this very moment."

"And Gann thinks the Cajmians are less than forthcoming," Jack said as the guards surrounded them. He raised his hands into the air and smiled wide hoping that they'd see it as a sign of submission. The thought did cross his mind that he had never seen Beheer smile and it might be because their culture saw it as offensive or worse--- aggressive.

Jack looked at Olwen. "Anything?"

She didn't respond. "Hey, you okay?"

Commander Olwen Lasas fell to her knees and screamed. Jack went to the ground to help her, forgetting those who held weapons pointed his direction.

Lasas turned her head skyward. "Pain!" she cried. "Betrayal! Pain!"

A moment later she collapsed into the fine sands of Cajma.

***

Olwen Lasas opened her eyes and saw the smiling face of Jack McCall look down at her.

"Glad you came back to us," he said and motioned a doctor over to the biobed in the Venture's Sickbay.

"How did we get here?" she asked.

Jack raised an eyebrow. "It was pretty boring actually. The Cajmians only threatened to kill me twice."

She tried to sit up, but found it difficult. "I have to see Captain Gann, now."

Jack nodded. "He'll be here. What did you sense down there?"

She shook her head. "I'll only tell Captain Gann."

Jack's face became stern. "I'm the one who almost got shot when I tried to get them to let me help you. You owe me."

She turned away from him. "No."

Jack forced her to face him. "There's something alive down there. A being of some kind."

She slowly nodded.

Jack let her go. At that moment, Cyrus Wakernaggle stormed into the room.

"What in the name of hell did you think you would accomplish, Captain McCall?!"

Jack turned to him, but said nothing.

"Oh, don't think I and the Cajmians don't see through your little 'emergency'. I've seen your service record. Only a complete incompetent would have taken that shuttle near a power reactor and not ejected or transported off. You have placed everything I have worked for at risk!"

Jack thought for a moment about the way Gann hadn't been straight with him and how Wakernaggle, while certainly odd, had been more than courteous to him. In the end, it was an easy choice to make between the two men, despite Hank Evans' warning about the ambassador.

"I was following orders, Mr. Ambassador," Jack said plainly.

Olwen sat up and stared at Jack. "Captain McCall, no."

Wakernaggle turned to her and his anger subsided. "Yes, I see."

He turned to Jack. "Gann ordered you, didn't he?"

Jack nodded. "Yes, sir."

The ambassador grinned. "Take a walk with me, Captain McCall."

The Venture's Counselor shook her head. "Don't trust him, Jack."

Wakernaggle had already left the room expecting Jack to follow. After a moment of thought he did.

He caught up to the ambassador in the corridor.

"A wise choice, young man."

"You've not lied to me as far as I can tell," Jack said.

"And Captain Gann has on numerous occasions?"

Jack just smiled.

Wakernaggle laughed. "Julien Gann comes from a dangerous breed of Starfleet officers, Jack. He places his own ideas of morality and ethics above all else, making himself, because of the power at the hands of a starship captain, for all practical purposes, a god. His kind don't allow the concepts of due process or representative government to get in the way of what they know with absolute certainty to be right."

Jack listened as they continued down the corridor. He wasn't sure he really trusted Wakernaggle either, but what he said made sense to Jack. He had become increasingly worried about Gann's attitudes.

The ambassador smiled. "Sometimes I wonder if men like Gann are so lofty they require teams of men to remove the loads of marble from their water closets on a daily basis."

Jack chuckled. He might have put it a bit more crudely, but he understood the sentiment.

They stopped walking next to a turbolift door.

Wakernaggle turned to him. "Go back to your ship, Captain. I will deal with Julien Gann."

For the first time Jack was worried about the ambassador. There was something about the glee in his eyes that actually scared Jack, but he was the last person to stick around and defend Gann.

"Goodbye, Ambassador."

"Take care of yourself, my boy. You have a bright future ahead of you."

Jack stepped into the turbolift and after the doors closed he was more than a little worried he had just sold his soul to the devil.

GO TO CHAPTER 8