Picard motioned to Troi for her to follow him. When they had gotten out of earshot, he whispered, “Do you think we can trust him?”
She nodded. “I believe so. I have been sensing that he had something to hide, but his mental defenses let down when he agreed to help.”
[202] “You look tired,” said the captain.
“Please don’t tell me to sleep,” she cautioned him. “Will is down on the surface in one of those suits, and my cabin is full of refugees. Unless you’ve got a cot in your ready room—”
“I’m afraid not,” said the captain with a wry smile. “I agree, there’s no rest at the moment. Thank you for your help, Counselor.”
She shook her head doubtfully. “We need a lot of help.”
“I know.”
Geordi La Forge paced the gleaming confines of the radiation lab on deck seventeen, feeling guilty that he had all this space to himself when the ship was crammed to the airlocks with evacuees. He hoped he wouldn’t be alone much longer, because Leah Brahms was supposed to be working with him. She was late for their first shift together, which made him pace all the faster.
This situation—the two of them working alone together in a crisis—was uncomfortably like the circumstances under which he had fallen in love with Leah. Of course, that had been a simulation on the holodeck. The radiation laboratory was the same kind of close, isolated environment, removed from the rest of the ship. Geordi wasn’t worried that she would be distracted by this—after all, the real Leah Brahms hadn’t been on the holodeck—he was worried about his own feelings spilling out.
She’s a widow, he reminded himself, and she’s just lost everything she has in the world. ... More than anything, he had to respect her right to privacy and grief during this tragic time. She needed a friend right now, not more complications. In many respects, he felt guilty about even making her work on this assignment, but her radiation suit was the only object to withstand the Genesis Wave so far. And she was the only person to have lived through it.
La Forge had one of the replicated suits in the lab, and he had [203] started to study it while he waited; but he wasn’t quite sure what he was looking at. What they needed were a couple of Romulan engineers who knew this phase-shifting like he and Leah knew warp engines. He could make educated guesses, and Leah had done more than guess—she had put it to use—but they had no design notes or schematics. Even Leah’s records were all lost on Outpost Seran-T-One.
With a whoosh, the door to the lab opened, and Geordi turned eagerly to see his fellow engineer walk in. She was dressed in a gray engineer’s jumpsuit borrowed from his department, having arrived with only the grimy clothes on her back. She looked determined and alert, if not happy to be there. Once again, he thought about how much he liked the short, chestnut-colored hair framing her angelic face, and he gave her a warm smile.
The smile faded almost immediately from his face when he saw another figure stride through the door behind her. It was the old Klingon, Maltz, and he cast a fishy eye in Geordi’s direction. There was something proprietary in the Klingon’s rheumy gaze, as if he considered himself Leah’s protector, or at least her chaperone.
Seeing Geordi’s surprised expression, Leah patted him on the shoulder. “It’s all right—I told Maltz he could come along to help us. He’s seen it, too.”
“I must do something,” grumbled the old Klingon. “They filled up my cabin with more derelicts like me, and it got depressing. We can not run from this enemy—we must go down fighting it!”
“Uh, yes,” agreed Geordi, “but our particular mission is to find a way to let more people survive the wave.”
Leah shook her head grimly. “I’ll help you do it, but you won’t want to live on one of these planets after you’re done.”
“That’s just it,” said Geordi excitedly. “Now we’ve got some really good long-range scanner data from the affected planets. They may not be pleasant—borderline Class-L—but they are livable, with thin oxygen and native plant and animal life. By replanting [204] and standard terraforming, we can probably get them back to what they once were.”
Leah shivered and looked down, and Maltz’s attention seemed far away, as if dealing with an old memory. Geordi quickly added, “Both of you saw these planets when they were still forming, before the radical changes were over. The new Genesis Planets look like they’re going to be stabilizing quite nicely.”
Brahms turned away, and La Forge felt a pang of guilt about having been so blunt. Of course, one of those planets was Seran, where her husband and friends had been absorbed into the new ecosystem. He appealed helplessly to her. “I didn’t mean anything by it ... I was just trying to explain—”
Maltz laughed out loud and shook his head. “This is why humans are so pathetic. In trying to look on the bright side all the time, they ignore the obvious danger. Do you not see? These worlds are being terraformed to the specifications of the new owners, and they will come to claim them.”
“But it won’t be as easy if there are living people on the planets,” countered La Forge. He held up his palms, beseeching Leah to forgive him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be so blunt—I wish you didn’t have to be here. We’re just trying to save lives as best we can. We haven’t got enough ships to evacuate everyone—this current mission is a mess. We need shelters that work, and we need them right now.”
The woman turned around and gazed at him; her brown eyes were moist from tears, but her jaw was set in firm determination. “All right, I’ll help you, but we need a lot of stuff. Start making a shopping list.”
“I will,” answered Geordi, snapping to and grabbing a padd. “What do you need?”
“We need those big interphase generators the Romulans have.”
“Okay,” said La Forge doubtfully. “That’s going to be hard. We don’t have that technology.”
“Call up Admiral Nechayev,” said Leah. “Have her contact the [205] Romulans. Without those big generators—the kind they use to cloak their newest ships—it won’t work. If we can get a few, we can replicate them like we did with the suit, but we need those to stand a chance.”
“Where is this admiral?” said Maltz, balling his hands into fists. “I will deal with her.”
“No, I’ll get on it,” promised Geordi, rushing to a communications console. “What else?”
Leah stroked her chin thoughtfully. “I’ll also need data on how deep into the crust of the planet the Genesis Effect goes. Maybe all we need to do is dig holes deep enough to protect the inhabitants. I know a certain geologist who’s not doing much, and she’d be willing to help us.”
“The more the merrier,” muttered Geordi under his breath as he worked the console.
“What did you say?” asked Maltz suspiciously.
“Um, just talking to myself.” Geordi went back to carefully wording a message to Admiral Nechayev and Captain Picard.
“I really like Dolores,” said Leah. “I approve.”
Geordi wanted to correct her impression of him and the visiting geologist, but he was done looking like he still had a thing for Leah, even if he did. He kept his attention on his work. “While we wait, you can bring me up to speed on this technology. I’d like to see how it works in the suit.”
“All right,” answered Leah, sitting on a stool. For the first time, she looked around the sumptuous laboratory with its miniature clean room, test chambers, and racks of test instruments.
“It has running water, too,” said Leah with a wry smile. “Say, I might just move in here. There’s a lot more room here than in my quarters. What do you say, Maltz?”
“Typical Federation decadence,” the Klingon said, his body language at odds with his disdainful tone as he stretched out on the roomy deck. “You do your research and save your lives, while I save [206] my strength to take lives. We will go back and kill the ones who are doing this. Right, Captain?”
“I’ll be there.” Leah winked at Geordi as if she were humoring the old warrior, but there was
a spark of excitement in her eyes. She added, “To at least one person in the universe, I’m a captain.”
“That’s great,” said Geordi, mustering some enthusiasm when all he felt was hopelessness. “I thought that maybe we could use a protomatter beam, so I installed one in Test Chamber Two.”
“Dangerous,” said Leah, frowning at the idea.
“I know, but we need it to simulate the wave in tests, don’t we?”
“You want to recreate the wave?” she asked incredulously.
“Not the mutagenic part, just the energy wave that is carrying all this information.”
“He is right,” said the Klingon, lying on the deck, his eyes still shut. “The original Genesis Device used a detonation to expand, turning into a wave as it moved outward, circling a planet. Someone must be projecting this wave from a fixed point—a space station. It is probably hidden and hard to reach.
“A task force has been sent to look for the source,” added Geordi.
The Klingon growled. “They do not know what they are looking for, do they? I understand this enemy—I knew it would come looking for me again someday, and it did. When you finish saving lives, we shall go kill it. Wake me then, Captain.”
“Okay, Maltz,” said Leah Brahms without a trace of humor in her voice.
“I don’t much like waiting for the end of the world,” muttered Will Riker. The commander sat on the edge of his bed in a strange hotel room, wrapped in a blanket; it was getting cold, and he was only wearing underwear. The climate controls in the hotel had ceased working, to go along with all the chaos in the streets. But [207] why try to save energy now—when this world would soon be gone, replaced by something else?
“It is difficult to watch this world die,” allowed Data, “especially with so little dignity.” The android unplugged his tricorder from a jack on the back of his radiation suit, apparently finished with his diagnostic routines. “Both suits are still functioning within normal parameters.”
“That’s good,” said Riker, rising to his feet. “Because I’m going to put mine back on.”
“We have approximately twenty-two minutes,” observed Data. “We should be receiving new projections from the transporter room very soon, and the evacuation will be over.”
“Ending with a whimper, not a bang,” said Riker. He stood and walked toward the balcony door, careful not to step into view, because vandals had been throwing bricks earlier. All of the glass was smashed. Nevertheless, he could gaze down into the square, which echoed with plaintive voices, begging to be saved.
For the last hour, people in the square had been disappearing in random clusters, rescued via transporter beam from ships in orbit. Now thousands of residents were standing around, lifting their arms to the heavens, beseeching the fickle gods of far-off transporters to save them. Some danced; others sang, wept, or did whatever they thought might get them noticed, although both they and Riker knew it was a random process. At least somebody was doing something for the people stranded in the heart of Carefree.
“When it hits,” said Riker, “I don’t want to be inside this skyscraper. I want to be down there.” He pointed to the square.
The wind shifted, and a whiff of something acrid hit Riker’s nostrils. He looked up just as the sprinkler system in the ceiling of the hotel room came on, blasting everything with a dense spray of water and chemicals. Smoke was seeping through the closed door from the hallway. Data immediately rushed into action, grabbing the [208] radiation suits, but even the android couldn’t move quickly enough to keep them from getting drenched. Plus there was nowhere in the room to hide from the cascading liquids.
The chemicals burned in Riker’s eyes, but he still managed to grab one of the suits and haul it out onto the balcony. From there, he could see that the hotel was on fire several stories overhead, where columns of black smoke curled into the sky. Riker glanced into his suit to see that it had gotten wet inside, and he also realized that they couldn’t get out the doorway. It was about twelve meters straight down to the sidewalk, and that looked like the way they would have to leave.
He was jostled when Data joined him on the balcony, dragging his armor, and it suddenly became very crowded out there. “I’m considered aborting this mission,” murmured Riker. “I just have a bad feeling ... too many things going wrong.”
Data cocked his head. “Transporters on the Enterprise will be occupied for another ten minutes and twenty seconds. Most of the rescue ships have already departed, although a few still remain in orbit. This would not be an opportune time to seek assistance.”
Riker glanced down at the square and saw that the mob was milling around, arguing disgruntledly among themselves. The random transports seemed to have ceased, and so had the momentarily happy mood. Now a feeling of desperation was setting in.
“We need to get down,” said the commander.
“I will jump down, and you can throw me the equipment.”
Riker nodded, and Data bounded over the wrought-iron railing as easily as if he were stepping over a curb. The android made a perfect two-point landing and looked up to the human—at the very instant that an explosion blew the room door open. A fireball roared from the hallway through the room, hurling Riker and the radiation suits over the railing.
eighteen
Deanna Troi stopped in the middle of her sentence, her finger in the air, and she couldn’t remember what she had been saying to the group of evacuees gathered in her office. She had an overwhelming premonition—a certainty—that something had happened to Will.
Troi looked at the chronometer over her door and noted that they were only about fifteen minutes away from the expected arrival of the wave—and their departure soon after. She knew the radiation suit was supposed to be foolproof, but so many things had gone wrong today that she couldn’t rest easy for one second. She had been worried about Will before, but now she was terrified.
Patients were bombarding her with questions, but she shoved her way through them, saying things like, “We’ll talk about that when I get back. Have strength! Maybe your loved ones are on another ship. We’ll get lists of names as soon as we disembark.”
Finally she broke out of her office into the corridor, which was hardly any better. Her shoulders and forearms were bruised from having to shove her way through the crowds which clogged the corridors of the Enterprise. But she lowered her head again and plowed [210] through the dispirited, disgruntled throng. This time, Deanna was more determined than ever, because the worry for Will had turned into abject fear.
Only one turbolift was open now on this whole deck—to keep the evacuees from moving around the ship. All of them had heard about how wonderful the accommodations were in the lounge, the theater, the holodecks, or some other leisure area, and they didn’t want to stay in a packed corridor. She wondered how they would like it if they knew the Enterprise wasn’t leaving orbit until the last possible second.
Troi was slowed down by the milling crowds, who glared suspiciously at her, knowing that she had free run of the ship. But today free run of the Enterprise was not what it used to be; she almost looked fondly back to when it had a skeleton crew. Impatiently, Deanna tapped her combadge and said, “Troi to Riker.”
After several seconds of silence, she tried again. “Troi to Riker.”
A chime sounded, followed by the computer’s voice. “Commander Riker is not responding.”
Her jaw set firmly, Troi lifted her elbows and jabbed her way through the crowd, shouting, “Out of my way! Emergency!”
Deanna finally reached the turbolift, where the hectored guard was busy arguing with refugees. She noticed that he now had his phaser rifle leveled for action rather than slung over his shoulder, as she had seen him last time. Upon noticing her, he slapped a panel to call the turbolift for her.
“I have to go with you!” shouted a woman, chasing after Troi.
“Let me see the captain!” shouted someone else. “You don’t understand—”
The counselor ha
ted having to turn a cold shoulder to their fervent pleas, but they were safe—and Will was not. When the turbolift door opened, she dashed inside, leaving the guard to fend off the evacuees who tried to follow her. He snapped and barked at them, using his rifle to push the mob back. Deanna was grateful when the [211] door finally shut, leaving her alone in the conveyance. It seemed oddly peaceful inside the cocoon of the turbolift.
“Transporter room two,” she ordered, hoping to get as close as possible.
When the turbolift door opened at her destination, an armed security officer tumbled backwards into Deanna, pushed by a surge of refugees trying to get on. Operating instinctively, Troi picked up the man’s phaser rifle and quickly fired a shot over the crowd’s head. That stopped them for a second, long enough for her to make sure the phaser was set to stun. When the horde pushed forward again, she drilled a big Ardanan in the front row, and he tumbled across the threshold of the turbolift, unconscious.
“Back off!” she shouted. “Make way! That’s an order!”
She wanted to see how far this mutiny would progress—if it even was a mutiny. The sight of the ship’s counselor wielding a weapon and firing at will into the crowd did have an effect, and they finally made a slight path for her.
Before she left the turbolift, Troi bent down to make sure the security officer was all right. The young ensign seemed groggy but coherent. “Can you get to your feet?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I’m keeping your weapon,” she told him. “I want you to call for backup on this deck and get yourself to sickbay.”
“Yes, Commander,” he answered. “Thank you.”
Phaser rifle leveled in front of her, Troi strode off the turbolift, motioning people to get out of her way. “If necessary, we won’t hesitate to use force to maintain order!” she shouted.
Most of the panicked crowd backed away from her, but a few distraught evacuees regaled her with queries and demands. “My children are in school!” shouted one worried man.
STAR TREK: TNG - The Genesis Wave, Book One Page 20