by Gene DeWeese
The scientist had smiled faintly. “That is already a certainty, Captain, no matter what I do, if not within hours then within days. Only a substantial infusion of new blood has given me what little strength I have, and even that would not help after the transfer back to Krantin. And I do not propose to lie here, clinging to a few more useless days, while there is even the slightest chance that the Directorate can be defeated and Krantin saved.”
And Picard had nodded grimly, conceding the truth in Zalkan’s words.
The elevator door slid open at Albrect’s command and the group hurried down the still-deserted subbasement corridor. As Albrect approached the massive sliding door they had emerged from earlier, the faint humming coming from beyond the door suddenly increased in volume. Albrect stiffened and lunged the remaining meters to the door and jammed his key into the lock. Through the tiny crack at the bottom of the door, a sliver of light flashed. Then the door was open and Albrect was racing back through the twisted corridors of consoles and packing cartons. The others followed, Picard pausing to slide the door shut.
A young man in dark coveralls sat on the floor near the active consoles, apparently recovering from the transfer. He lurched to his feet when he saw Denbahr.
“It won’t work,” he said, still short of breath. “I left the markers in an abandoned house near the airlock, but the area is crawling with guards. Several of them were sent outside, either to guard the ship or to try to take it over.”
“They won’t get in,” Picard said, frowning, “but if they try too vigorously, it would lift off, out of their reach. And out of ours, too, unfortunately. Either way, I don’t see how we could reach it if Khozak is determined to stop us from getting through the airlock.” He turned to Albrect. “Is there any way you can transfer one of us to the area outside the airlock and bring him back? If the shuttlecraft is still there—”
Albrect shook his head. “With one of the new Directorate machines, perhaps, but not with this one. All it can do is home in on a marker. Or make a random transfer to the general vicinity of this same area on that Krantin, and that would be more than a hundred kilometers from the city.”
“Are there other markers in the city?” Picard asked. “If one of us could get to a radio, we at least could warn the Enterprise even if we couldn’t get back on board ourselves.”
Albrect shook his head. “Very few.”
“And the only radios I know of that I could guide you to,” Denbahr said, “are the ones I used before, in the lab, and the ones in the machines we use to drive to the power plant. But those are all in the storage and repair area that the airlock opens into, so they’d be almost as hard to get to as your shuttlecraft.”
“If I were to transfer alone,” Data, still cradling a weakening Zalkan in his arms, said, “I believe the odds are good that I could either evade or overpower the guards long enough to reach one of the machines you speak of and make use of the radio.”
“If the radio in the first one you try works,” Denbahr said. “Or in the first half-dozen. We might have a better chance going after the one in the lab.” She glanced at Ormgren. “You did say there was a marker somewhere in the building?”
The young man nodded. “In the subbasement. It might not be functional, however. It is one that Zalkan placed there several years ago.”
“At least I’d be in familiar territory,” Denbahr said. She shook her head. “It’s too bad there isn’t a way to come out around the power plant. That’s where I left my machine when you people picked me up that first day, and its radio is working, or at least it was when I left it there a couple of days ago.”
“The power plant?” Albrect brightened. “There may be a way,” he said. “For a time, we used an area only a kilometer or so from it for a dump site.” When Denbahr looked at him questioningly, he went on. “The material from the mine. The only way to get it out is to transfer it here, and we obviously can’t leave it lying around. It’s tricky enough to keep a functioning jump machine down here without someone from the Directorate stumbling onto it. Storing the dirt and rock from the mines here would be impossible, so we have to jump it back to Krantin, somewhere far away from the mines. One of those somewheres was not far from the power plant. We stopped using it when we realized what it was and that you technicians were visiting it every few months. Now, if the marker there is still functional . . .”
As he had been speaking, Albrect had turned back to the console and tapped in a series of commands. After several seconds studying the screen, he nodded. “I can lock on to it,” he said. “That’s a good sign.”
Picard nodded, beginning to have hope. “If it works, this could be better for us than reaching a radio inside the city. Mr. Data, you can go through and proceed to the power plant and the radio and contact the Enterprise. Have them send a shuttlecraft down immediately. Return for us the moment it arrives. If you do not return—” He turned to Albrect. “He can return, can he not?”
Albrect nodded. “As long as the Directorate doesn’t find us here. And the more often we use the jumper, the more likely it is that someone will stumble onto us. That’s one reason progress in the mines has been so slow. But yes, he can return.”
“Very well. Data, if you do not return within half an hour, we will utilize the marker that Ormgren left near the airlock in Jalkor.”
“Yes, Captain,” Data said.
As the android lowered Zalkan gently toward the floor, the scientist stirred in his arms. “Tell them also to bring their magical potion,” he whispered. “I begin to suspect I overestimated my ability to survive another transfer.”
Riker scowled as he broke the connection with President Khozak. The man was a raving paranoid lunatic. Despite Khozak’s mea-culpa confession and professed conversion, it didn’t take a Deanna Troi to realize that he still didn’t “trust” Riker or anyone connected with the Federation. If anything, he mistrusted them now more than ever. It was just that, finally, he must have decided he had dug himself into a hole so deep that no other choice remained.
But at least now Riker had some idea what had happened, and it wasn’t good. Denbahr, presumably with help from Zalkan, had “rescued” Deanna, the captain, Data, and Koralus from under Khozak’s nose, though he had trouble imagining why. Despite Khozak’s rampant paranoia, the president hadn’t been about to harm them. Unless, Riker thought uneasily, Denbahr had learned something about Khozak that might contradict that assumption. Or unless there was some connection between the rescue and the seemingly short-lived “invasion” of the Enterprise, which appeared to have drifted to an end with the twin surges in Engineering.
And the timing was suspicious, Riker had to acknowledge. The rescue had come at almost the peak of the Directorate assault—assumed Directorate assault—on the Enterprise. As a result, the energy surge associated with it hadn’t been noticed for another half hour, when the review of the shuttlecraft records was conducted.
And the second surge, the one near the airlock, had coincided roughly with the end of the assault. Possibly sheer coincidence in both cases, but Riker mistrusted coincidence almost as much as President Khozak mistrusted the Enterprise and the Federation.
The only questions of any real import, however, were: Where had the four been taken, and why? And, most important, where were they now? From the evidence of the energy surge and Khozak’s description of the “rescue,” Riker assumed they had been taken to that other Krantin, the Krantin of the Directorate.
But why? Denbahr knew the ill effects of the transfers; she had seen Zalkan and now knew the reason for his condition. Admittedly, it would take several transfers to cause irreversible damage, but still, for her to subject not only them but herself to even one transfer, she must have thought it important.
But it wouldn’t be just one transfer, not if it was indeed a rescue. They would have to be returned to this Krantin, or they would be prisoners forever in the Directorate Krantin, never able to return to the Enterprise or the Federation.
Or h
ad they already returned? Was that what the second surge had been, the one near the airlock? Had they returned there, hoping to get through the airlock to the shuttlecraft? If so, what had happened to them? Khozak swore that none of the dozen or more guards at the airlock had seen anyone other than each other since the time of the surge.
Was it even remotely possible that one of Khozak’s paranoid fantasies was actually true, that Denbahr and/or Zalkan were in league with the Directorate and they had not rescued the Enterprise officers but kidnapped them? From his own impressions of the woman, not to mention Deanna’s more informed opinion, he found that extremely hard to credit.
But the “rescue” made no sense either. Unless he was missing a major piece of information, which unfortunately was entirely possible, even likely.
For what seemed like hours but was in reality less than a minute, Riker remained in the captain’s seat, his mind continuing to circle in frustration. If there was one thing he couldn’t abide, had never been able to abide, it was sitting on the sidelines, simply waiting for developments when something inside him kept shouting at him to do something, if only to stir the pot and see what, if anything, floated to the top. That was one reason he preferred an away team to bridge duty. And when Deanna was the one who might be in danger—
Abruptly, he stood and turned to the tactical station. Speaking quickly, formulating his thoughts as he spoke, he issued a series of orders, then strode to the turbolift. “You have the conn, Mr. Worf,” he concluded as the doors hissed shut behind him.
Chapter Twenty-one
LUCKILY DATA WAS NOT SUBJECT to the weakness and disorientation that humans experienced immediately after a transfer. It was even luckier that he had made the jump alone, carrying only a tricorder and a half-dozen markers, rather than with Denbahr, who had given him complete instructions for locating and operating the radio. As it was, he was able to recover his balance and catch himself before he had slid and lurched more than two or three meters down the steep slope of rocks and dirt he found himself on. His uniform was torn in several places, but his body suffered only the android equivalent of minor scratches.
And the tricorder, in its field case suspended from his shoulder, was unharmed despite several impacts.
Carefully, dislodging as little of the rubble as possible, he made his way to the bottom and level ground. Visibility was even worse than it had been the other times he had been exposed to this Krantin’s atmosphere. Low clouds hid even the reddish glow that was all that reached the planet from its sun. Even the power plant, little more than a kilometer distant according to Denbahr, was lost in fog and Plague.
But it was there, he saw a moment later as the tricorder zeroed in on the powerful and easily identifiable fusion processes. Depositing one of the markers on a flat area a few meters from the mound of rubble, he broke into a run, unhindered by the unbreathable atmosphere.
Once the plant came in sight, Data altered his course to head directly for the spot on the road where he remembered Denbahr parking her vehicle, and he was at its door only minutes after he had emerged on the rubble slope.
As Denbahr had said, the outer and inner doors were unlocked and the magnetic card that turned on the electrical system was protruding from its slot beneath the button that started the engine.
Quickly, he pushed it all the way into the slot and waited as the screen came to life, a series of icons indicating what was operating and what was not. Almost immediately, he saw that the radio was not among the indicated functions. Just as quickly, he located the radio itself and checked the associated switches. All were set as Denbahr had indicated they should be.
He pulled the card out and replaced it. Like everything else on Krantin, Denbahr had said, the radio often showed its age and needed coaxing.
This time, it came on, but when Data set it to transmit, it crackled briefly and fell silent, and a moment later its “active” icon vanished from the screen.
Data considered the situation for all of half a second. Time was of the essence, if Zalkan was to be believed, and Counselor Troi had said he was. Given time, he might be able to repair the radio. It might even come back to life on its own. But it might not. And there were other radios, Denbahr had said, in the area near the city’s airlock. The chances of his eluding or quickly overpowering the guards there, if they opposed him, were better, he decided, than continuing to try this radio.
Placing one of the markers on the other seat so he or Denbahr could return and try again if the captain desired, he took the marker that would return him to Albrect’s basement station in his hand.
Restlessly, Riker circled low over the mounds and sinkholes that marked the mines. There was no progress anywhere. Examination of the captain’s shuttlecraft, returned by remote control to the Enterprise, had yielded nothing. The security detail he had sent in another shuttlecraft to the airlock had reported no activity and, except for one ensign remaining on board, was in the process of being let inside the city. Khozak himself had come on the radio and assured both Riker and the leader of the security detail that neither Denbahr nor any of the Enterprise personnel had been seen in the vicinity of the airlock or anywhere else in Jalkor. However, he had no objection to the detail’s coming in with tricorders and conducting their own search.
Riker grimaced as he took the shuttlecraft to a higher altitude and continued to watch the sensor displays. What had he been expecting? For Deanna or the captain or Data to conveniently materialize at the entrance to the mines? The only even semilogical reason for his patrolling the area was that it was the primary area on Krantin in which energy surges had been detected and the only place outside of Jalkor where humanoid life-forms had been detected. The real reason, though, was that he couldn’t bring himself to stay on the Enterprise bridge, simply waiting. In that respect, he was no Captain Picard. The captain seemed to have infinite patience, a characteristic Riker had sometimes envied but never shared with him. His impatience had served him well sometimes, ill others, but if he didn’t give in to it now and then he would—
Suddenly, a change in the readouts leaped out at him.
An energy surge! But not here! In the city?
No, the indicated heading was at least ninety degrees from Jalkor. What—
The power plant! That was at least approximately on this heading, but more than a hundred kilometers distant. And the first time they had encountered Denbahr, she had been just leaving the power plant!
His heart was pounding as he took the shuttlecraft up sharply, locked the sensors on to the prominent signature of the fusion units, and accelerated along the new heading.
Within minutes, the power plant, blocky and sprawling, emerged from the rusty haze.
And there was a life-form somewhere down there!
But only one, not four. Who—
Abruptly, the readings solidified: an artificial life-form, humanoid and—
Data! But where was Deanna? The captain?
Locking the sensors on to this new target, he brought the shuttlecraft swooping down to ground level—and found himself only meters in front of the vehicle he had first seen Denbahr in.
* * *
Zalkan, his head still cradled in Denbahr’s lap, opened his eyes again. This time Koralus stood over him, and the scientist smiled. It had been right, that first instinctive reaction to Koralus’s name and face, the face he had seen a thousand times in his mind, though never before in reality. His Koralus, one of the first of the so-called underground, had been killed by the Directorate long before Zalkan had been born. But Zalkan had known him, if not in the flesh, in the words of his grandmother, and seeing and listening to this Koralus was like having her words come to life. The lives of the two men had been as different as the two Krantins they had inhabited, but their characters had been the same, just as the characters of the other “twins” had proved essentially the same in both worlds despite lives different in every detail. In one, rebelling against the Directorate had cost that Koralus his life. In the other,
championing the Migration had cost this one even more dearly.
But now, if this desperate plan worked . . .
Albrect, once Zalkan had explained who Koralus was, had agreed immediately that Koralus’s presence greatly strengthened the chances for stability if the Directorate was—when the Directorate was brought down.
But for that to happen, for the Directorate to be destroyed, he himself had to survive for another few minutes, until the one called Data returned with the magic potion.
But until then . . .
His eyes closed and again he drifted into exhausted sleep, his almost-grandfather’s face still floating before him.
Data froze, his thumb millimeters from pressing down on the marker that would return him to that other Krantin. He very nearly decided to run a diagnostic on his own perceptual circuits, so unlikely did he consider what had suddenly appeared only meters in front of the vehicle: an Enterprise shuttlecraft. But the urgency of the situation and the tremendous amount of time the shuttlecraft, if real, would save him overcame the positronic logic circuits that, otherwise, would have demanded a diagnostic.
Opening the vehicle’s outer door, he climbed out and dropped to the ground. An instant later, the door to the shuttlecraft opened and Commander Riker’s voice boomed from the little ship’s PA system. “Data! Get in here! What happened?”
Data was inside almost before Riker’s words were out. “I will explain in a moment, Commander. Has a group claiming to be Directorate defectors been allowed on board the Enterprise?”
“Four of them came on board two or three hours ago,” Riker said, frowning. “But how the devil did you know?”
“After the four were killed, has the Enterprise been invaded by several individuals, each—”
Scowling, Riker cut Data off. “How did you know—Never mind. Yes, we were almost overrun. There were hundreds of them, popping up everywhere, firing their weapons at anyone they saw, racing around with no rhyme or reason. But that’s over now. No one was killed, at least not permanently, and the damage to the Enterprise was minor. And if they try it again, we’re ready for them.”