by Gene DeWeese
Grimacing, she threw back the covers and sat up. No more sleep tonight, not the way her mind and stomach were churning, and even if she were able to sleep, she would be faced with dreams even more terrifying and bizarre than reality.
Not turning any lights on, she crossed to her terminal and voiced it on as she sat down. Only a microphone and speaker and screen. After Zalkan had pulled her loose from two years of fantasies, she had ripped out the helmet and all the tactile connectors.
“Plague revenge fantasies,” she said, and titles began scrolling up the screen.
“Description. Forty-eight,” she said, spotting a likely title.
The screen froze, number forty-eight highlighted. “An expedition to the fifth planet discovers an abandoned alien base, suspected of triggering the Plague,” the computer’s neutral voice began. “Artifacts found on the base are returned to Krantin, where they are analyzed and improved upon, thereby enabling a second expedition to track the aliens to what is thought to be their homeworld and to turn the Plague back on them when evidence is found proving they were indeed responsible for the Plague. The surviving aliens, however, are able to send a distress signal to their true homeworld, and—”
“Terminate description. Terminate session.”
She sank back in the chair as the screen faded to black. She remembered the fantasy she herself had been submerged in when Zalkan had pulled her free that morning ten years ago. In that one, as in countless others, aliens had come to Krantin to check on the results of an experiment they had casually started a thousand years before, but they were found out. In the end, as always, their homeworld—or had it been an Empire that time?—had been destroyed by an avenging fleet from Krantin.
Could she blame Khozak for his paranoia? Like everyone, he had been raised on the revenge fantasies, a thousand variations on a single theme: Aliens found to be responsible for the Plague are destroyed. They were second in popularity only to pastoral fantasies about the world Krantin had been a thousand years ago, its air clean and breathable, its lands fertile, its pretechnological cities open to blue-green skies.
And her own sharp reaction to Khozak’s paranoia had only reinforced it. She should have held her tongue. She realized now that the one called Picard had been following the sensible course—diplomatic discussion, not angry confrontation.
But Khozak was so infuriating, and these people from the stars were so obviously a—
A rasping buzz shattered the silent darkness, sending her bolt upright in the chair, her skin tingling, heart pounding. It had been ten years since she had last heard that sound. Zalkan had been at her door, and she had been lying on the cot, working up the energy to detach herself from the computer long enough for her daily meal.
She stood at the door, her room still dark. “Who is it?” she asked loudly, pressing her ear against the door. Even ten years ago, the buzzer had been all that worked. The voice system had died sometime in the two years she had been prisoner of the fantasies.
“Zalkan has sent me,” a muffled voice said. “He desperately needs your help.”
Her heart leaped. Ten years ago, he had saved her from the fantasies, and now—
Without hesitation, without thinking or wondering about the accusations she had heard leveled at him, without wondering how she could possibly help him, without even wondering if the person on the other side of the door had really been sent by Zalkan, she snatched open the door.
Chapter Seventeen
AHL DENBAHR SWALLOWED AWAY her jittery nerves and seated herself before her computer screen. Zalkan’s messenger, Ormgren, stood to the side, well out of reach of the video pickup, frowning skeptically. He was not happy with her “plan,” but he had been unable to suggest anything better after nearly half an hour of discussion.
“Here goes,” she said, and spoke Khozak’s access code into the audio pickup. To her surprise, the president’s face appeared on her computer screen within seconds. From his image, she couldn’t tell if he had simply not even gone to bed and tried to sleep or if, like her, he had been awakened and been unable to go back to sleep. Whatever the situation, he didn’t look happy, and he looked even less happy when he saw it was Denbahr who was calling him.
“What do you want now?” he snapped. His voice sounded as frayed and exhausted as he looked. “Haven’t you caused enough trouble?”
A sharp retort formed instantly in her mind, but she forced herself to pause and swallow the words. Without his cooperation, she couldn’t get near the people from the stars, and if she failed in this, Krantin’s last chance for survival would be gone.
“I’m sorry,” she said, forcing herself to sound penitent rather than defiant.
“I’m sure you are, for a great many things. Or you should be. But what’s so important it can’t wait till morning?”
“I have an idea how to find out if the people from the stars are telling the truth or lying.”
His eyes widened skeptically. “How?”
“I have to talk to them.”
“Why?”
“I told you, to find out if they’re telling the truth or not.”
“You’re talking in circles, Technician! Now tell me precisely how you can determine if they’re telling the truth.”
“It’s not something I can explain easily.”
“Try, Technician. If you don’t, this conversation is over.”
Stifling an almost irresistible surge of anger, she managed to limit herself to a frown while she thought furiously. Wherever they were, Khozak had doubtless posted guards, so even if she managed to find out where they were, she didn’t have a chance of getting to them without Khozak’s cooperation.
“You see these?” she said abruptly, holding up a half-dozen tiny gray disks less than a centimeter across. From the other side of her dimly lit room, out of reach of the video pickup, a startled gasp was abruptly cut short. She kept her eyes straight ahead, focused on Khozak’s image on the screen, and hoped he hadn’t heard Ormgren.
“I see them,” he said, still frowning but giving no indication he’d heard anything other than her words. “What are they?”
“I don’t know. They were given to Zalkan the first day by the one called Riker—rather secretively, now that I think back to it,” she improvised. “But so much was happening, I didn’t think any more about it, and I’d completely forgotten about them until tonight.”
“And?” Khozak prompted irritably when she paused, trying to think what to say next.
“And,” she went on, “whatever they are, they must be important to Zalkan. I think he sent someone back for them.”
Khozak’s frown turned to an angry scowl. “What happened?”
“I couldn’t sleep, so I went back to the lab. I don’t know what I was hoping to find, maybe just look through my records and see if they’d help me remember more about the last ten years with Zalkan, see if I could remember anything he’d said or done that would mean something, now that we know what he is, where he’s from.” That much was almost true; she’d thought about doing just that and probably would have eventually—if Ormgren hadn’t shown up.
“But when I was in the hall outside the lab,” she went on, “I saw a flash of light inside, just like the one when he disappeared. I thought maybe he’d come back, so I rushed in as soon as I could get the door unlocked, only it wasn’t Zalkan. It was a young man I’d never seen before, dark like most of the ones from the stars. And he was digging through Zalkan’s desk.”
Denbahr shrugged. “I yelled at him, and he ran. Practically knocked me over getting by me. So I started looking through the desk, too, and that’s when I found these things. And then I remembered what they were—or where Zalkan had gotten them, anyway.”
“And how will these objects, whatever they are, prove whether the people from the stars are lying or not?”
“I’ll show these things to them,” she said, suddenly proud of herself for coming up with such a story on the spur of the moment, under this kind of pressu
re. “I’ll make up some story about how I found them and how I think maybe they might be from Zalkan’s world, and I’ll ask them if they can analyze them and tell us what they are. If they say they don’t know what they are, then we’ll know they’re lying, that they’re involved with Zalkan and probably whoever’s responsible for the Plague.”
“And suppose they see through your simple little trick?” Khozak asked, scowling. “Suppose they admit they gave them to Zalkan and make up an explanation? If you don’t know what the objects are, how will you know if their explanation is true or not?”
Denbahr sighed, though she wanted to explode. “I admit, I probably wouldn’t. But at least there’s a chance we’ll prove they’re lying, which is more than you’ve been able to do so far. And if we do, you’ll be in a much better position when you speak to those higher-ups tomorrow. You’ll know they’re probably lying, too.”
Khozak was silent for several seconds, his scowl deepening at first, then distorting into a look of anguish.
“But I don’t want them to be lying!” he burst out. “I really don’t!” His image shuddered.
“Then just assume they’re telling the truth,” she said, forcing herself to speak calmly, “as I have. And let me do this test, which they will almost certainly pass.”
Still he hesitated.
“What do you have to lose?” she asked, unable anymore to totally bottle up the anger and frustration at his resistance. “Are you afraid I’ll try to pull something? Is that it? Look, you and your guards can stay with me the whole time. You can have me hauled out and arrested whenever you want to.” She paused, shaking her head in angry disbelief. “What is it you’re afraid of, Khozak? That I’m going to help them escape? If I were able to do that, I’d’ve done it already, before you locked them up and hid them away!”
For a long moment he was silent. Finally he sighed resignedly, very much like a man who’s decided he does indeed have nothing left to lose. “Very well, Technician. But don’t blame me if waking them up at this time of night irritates them.”
Twenty minutes later, Denbahr and Khozak and half a dozen of his security officers were at the door to the suite Picard and the others had been confined to. Denbahr was carrying Data’s tricorder. The disks—the markers—were in her pocket.
Data, who must have heard them approaching, was waiting for them just inside the main room of the suite when Khozak opened the door. Picard and Troi, still in their uniforms, were emerging from two of the bedrooms. Koralus came through a third door a moment later. All eyes but those of Koralus fell on the tricorder, but none of the three spoke.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Khozak began, but was cut off by Picard.
“If you truly do not wish to disturb us,” he said dryly, “you might consider returning us to our shuttlecraft.”
Khozak swallowed nervously. “Technician Denbahr has found something that could be important,” he said.
“I found some things in Zalkan’s lab,” she said, stepping past Khozak. “I’ve never seen anything like them before. They certainly aren’t anything either he or I had ever worked on, and I wasn’t able to analyze them. I was hoping you might be able to tell us what they are.”
“Is that why you brought Lieutenant Data’s tricorder?” Picard asked when Denbahr paused and reached into her pocket.
She nodded and pulled four of the gray disks from her pocket and quickly handed one to each of the three from the Enterprise.
“They could be computer chips of some kind,” Troi said, turning hers over in her hand.
“You don’t recognize them, then?” Khozak said a moment later.
“Recognize?” Picard looked at Khozak, who in turn looked toward Denbahr.
Denbahr turned to Koralus and handed him the fourth rectangle. “What about you?” she asked as he took it in his hand and frowned puzzledly. “Is this something you might’ve seen a hundred years ago?”
“What nonsense is this?” Khozak asked. “You said you had a plan—”
Denbahr’s hand had returned to her pocket as Khozak started to speak. She took one of the remaining disks and, as Zalkan’s messenger had instructed her, squeezed it as hard as she could between thumb and forefinger.
She felt a tingle over every square centimeter of her body, then a numbness, a dizziness. If she had been able to move, she would have fallen.
In the distance, she heard Khozak—or someone; she couldn’t be sure, the sound was so muffled—shouting at her. She caught none of the words. Koralus and the three from the stars were turning toward her.
Suddenly, she was enveloped in a blinding glare. A moment later, her ears popped painfully, as if she’d just undergone an atmospheric pressure change. When her sight finally returned, the room and Khozak and the guards were gone.
Riker scowled as he turned from the tactical station, once again under Ensign Thompson’s ministrations. Despite Khozak’s promise, a dozen attempts had failed to get a response on the EM link to Jalkor. There had also been an unexplained energy surge from somewhere in the city.
At least the team he had sent down to check on Picard’s shuttlecraft had found it apparently untouched. It sat deserted outside Jalkor’s only functioning airlock, its security system armed and operational, set to send a subspace message to the Enterprise at the first sign of attempted tampering and to lift off if the tampering persisted and grew forceful enough to threaten damage. As instructed, the team left an activated comm unit attached to the shuttlecraft entrance, another in plain sight on the ground immediately outside the city’s outer airlock door, and two more hidden in the rubble at the side of the decaying road.
But there were more immediate concerns than Khozak’s broken promise and the unchanged condition of the captain’s shuttlecraft.
Riker returned his full attention to the double image on the main viewscreen. On the left, the ship of the alien “defectors” floated in space, still inside the extended shields. On the right, the shuttlecraft returning from the alien ship was settling to the deck of the main shuttlebay.
Lieutenant Worf emerged within seconds and turned to wait for the other occupants. The four aliens appeared then, moving hesitantly, wearing gray-green tunics, trousers, and boots, all of which had the look of uniforms, particularly the rectangular and triangular insignia that were distributed in varying numbers and arrangements on all the tunics. Unlike the Krantinese with their Data-white faces and hands, these were darker, almost coppery, although the eyes of two of them appeared haggard and lifeless even as they looked around, gawking at the comparative immensity of the shuttlebay. One flinched and stumbled, half falling, when he saw the massive doors still open to space, the atmosphere contained only by the invisible annular forcefield. One of the three security officers immediately behind the aliens caught his arm and helped him back to his feet.
Worf glanced in the direction of the monitor that was transmitting the image to the bridge, then stepped back out of earshot of the four. “Commander,” he said quietly into his comm unit, “none of them are carrying anything my tricorder can identify as a weapon. However, it does show that each has a microchip-sized device implanted near the base of the skull.”
Riker grimaced. Yet another problem. “Could it be a communication device?” he asked.
“Perhaps, but if so, it is currently inactive.”
“Very well, take them directly to sickbay. Dr. Crusher’s instruments can probably tell us more, maybe even how to remove the devices, if that’s possible.”
“On our way, Commander,” Worf said, turning and signaling to the security detail.
“Dr. Crusher,” Riker said, “you heard?” Crusher, as a senior officer, had been roused shortly after Riker and had been observing events on a small monitor in her office in sickbay.
“I heard and saw, Will. Implants aside, none of them look to be in particularly good health. However, if nothing else, examining them may give me more of a database to work with, and the medical computer and I need all the help
we can get.”
On the screen, the alien ship continued to hang silently in space while Worf and the aliens and the rest of the security detail crowded into the nearest turbolift.
Khozak stood frozen in Zalkan’s lab, his stomach seeming to drop through the floor as he waited for his vision to return. Finally, after several tortured seconds, individual figures and objects emerged from the curtain of constantly shifting shadows, and he almost cried out as his fears were confirmed.
They were gone! All four prisoners—and Denbahr, of course.
He should have known it was a trick! The warning signs had all been there for him to see. The woman’s naive belief in the miracles these people from the stars—supposedly from the stars—had promised. Her blind loyalty to Zalkan. Even after learning who the scientist really was, what his world was responsible for, she had continued to defend him. She might even have known all along, might have been a part of what had been destroying Krantin for more than five centuries. And in his desperation, he had fallen for her outlandish story of a “test”—which had been nothing more than a ruse to gain her access to the prisoners, to allow her to—to do whatever she had done that had enabled them to go wherever Zalkan had gone.
He shook his head violently, as if to shake the thoughts free, and turned to the six guards, who seemed even more stunned than he. Fighting to keep his voice steady, he issued his orders—send guards immediately to the airlock and don’t let anyone through without his personal approval. And take as many men as could be found and do what should have been done hours ago—take charge of the ship, the so-called shuttlecraft, if, as he hoped, it still sat waiting for the escaped prisoners.
If it was already gone—
He shuddered. Whether it was gone or not, whether Denbahr was simply a dupe or an active agent of the Plague, no matter what the nature and motives of these people from the stars, he had bungled the situation badly. If this Federation was indeed a potential benefactor, he had alienated it by taking its representatives prisoner and now had let them be kidnapped from under his nose. And if the Federation was an agent of the Plague, in collusion with Zalkan’s world, he had let his hostages escape and had lost what little influence they might have given him.