“I was going to deliver no speech,” the Vulcan answered. “I was replying to your question about how I accept the vagaries of life. As for Jerit—I do not want him to go on any more missions like this. In terms of outgrowing his job, he is far beyond you. Perhaps you could help him adjust to life without the Romulan Star Empire. Without allegiance to the Empire to sustain them, many Romulan expatriates feel lost.”
[275] “I don’t feel lost,” protested Regimol. “I know right where I am. But I choose to question my own actions—that’s how I became a criminal in the first place. So don’t preach to me.”
“Then do not complain about being on the wrong path,” observed Teska.
Suddenly, the hatch of the runabout opened, and a squat Ferengi came bounding out, almost knocking over a technician’s cart. “Hey, what do you think of my ship?” asked Chellac smugly. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Your ship?” muttered Regimol.
“Yes, I’m to be captain when we enter the DMZ,” answered Chellac, studying his fingernails importantly. “Only Ferengi allowed, you know. You’ll have to hide in the pantry.”
“We’ll see about that,” snapped Regimol, moving toward the merchant.
Teska inserted herself between them. “A truce, please,” she requested. “In truth, we will all do whatever Admiral Nechayev tells us to do. I would think that both of you would welcome a chance to meet Vedek Yorka again.”
Chellac snorted. “He was lucky to be a prylar when I met him. That fraud. That cheat! We are allowed to cut his tongue out, aren’t we?”
“I would ask the admiral for permission,” suggested Teska.
“She’ll probably say no,” muttered the Ferengi. “But at least I have this fine ship for my voyage to the DMZ! Are you going along, Teska?”
“I have not received word.”
“I wish you could go instead of me,” complained Regimol. With hunched shoulders, the thief shuffled away from his shipmates, leaving them in the repair bay.
“I worry about him,” said Chellac. “The fire has gone out of his eyes.”
“He killed over fifteen hundred of his own people,” answered Teska, “or so he believes.”
[276] Chellac gave a low whistle. “That is a heavy burden, but he’s got a job to do.”
“You may have to take the initiative,” observed Teska. “After all, it is your ship now.”
Geordi La Forge and Data trudged across the fine, gray sand of a nameless asteroid in the Rixx System. La Forge wore an environmental suit, but Data functioned well in the thin atmosphere without a suit; he easily carried the portable Genesis device under one arm. Their small shuttlecraft was parked behind them, and the Sequoia was monitoring them from a safe distance.
“I hope the Sequoia can ascertain fluctuations in the subspace cracks,” said Data.
“You and your subspace cracks,” muttered the engineer. “We’re about to be turned into gelatinous goo, and you’re worried about subspace cracks!”
“This looks like an appropriate spot,” said the android, setting the metal box in the fine gray sand. He carefully aimed the device into countless hectares of lifeless nothingness. The stars glittered all around them in the sky, like an audience waiting to see them create life.
La Forge shivered, although it was a perfect temperature inside his suit. “We’re going to have moss creatures hanging from the trees.”
“There was no report of moss creatures in the two instances where these small emitters were used before,” replied the android as he knelt down to open the door of the device. Its lights and panels blinked reassuringly, and it did look like a Bajoran orb, thought La Forge.
“I believe these devices were designed to create temporary habitat,” said Data. “We will not be turned into gelatinous mass either. The lens is fixed, pointing in a specific direction. The beam cannot bend around and threaten us. However, earthquakes, heat, wind, toxic gases, acid rain, and other effects of Genesis—”
[277] La Forge waved his hand helplessly. “I’ve seen it all, and don’t want to see it again! Just turn the damn thing on, and I’ll try not to look.” The suited figure crouched down behind Data, then tapped him on the shoulder to indicate he was ready.
“Your tricorder,” said the android, pulling his instrument off his belt, turning it on, and leaving it in the sand.
Geordi fumbled but got his tricorder out, and he waited nervously while Data finished the final preparations on the doctored Genesis emitter. They had a backup box in the shuttlecraft, a replicate with an unaltered power system.
“All right,” said the android, pushing the combination of colored buttons which Chellac had given them—the same combination which had worked in the laboratory on a defused device.
Geordi flinched when the beam spread out, although it only went about fifty meters before becoming invisible to his ocular implants. The fearful green fire burned and roared, shooting licks of flame about waist-high, but it was like a campfire trying to burn in a rainstorm. The right combination of elements did not seem to be present. Feeble plants twisted from the dead soil, and noxious clouds swirled fitfully over the sputtering Genesis effect—but this ugly new life wasn’t destined to last long. A moment later, the beam stopped, and the plants instantly withered in an atmosphere that was wispy and unstable.
It was kind of sad, thought Geordi—like an old-fashioned firecracker much anticipated by a gang of children until it turns into a fizzling dud. He patted Data on the back. “Well done. I like this Genesis Light.”
“I did not mention it,” said Data, “but we could use the nanocapacitors to sabotage virtually every one of these devices in existence.”
“I know,” said Geordi with a sly smile. “Now that we’ve made it safe to play with, we can try all kinds of things. Reversing the charge is a good idea, but I can go it one better. What if we amplified the power into a burst and overloaded the boxes? Then we might get a reverse Genesis Wave, in which the device would try to Genesize [278] itself. It could end up pulling Genesis energy back through your sub-space cracks.”
“An interesting theory,” conceded Data. “First, let us see how this experiment turned out.” He tapped his combadge. “Data to Sequoia. Come in, Sequoia.”
There was no answer, and the android cocked his head. “That is not a good sign.”
“Are you sure they’re in range?” asked La Forge.
“Our signal is being boosted by the shuttlecraft,” answered Data. “We should return.” He picked up the spent Genesis emitter and his tricorder and dashed back to the shuttlecraft.
The engineer had to jog through the thick dust in order to arrive two minutes behind him, panting heavily. He found the android in the pilot’s seat, going over screen after screen of readouts.
“The rift has grown so large that it swallowed the debris field,” reported Data.
“What?” La Forge dropped into the seat beside him and brought up the readouts at a speed he could comprehend. The scans were incomplete, but there was no denying that the rift nearest them had increased exponentially as a result of their little experiment. Setting off a whole chain of portable Genesis emitters would no doubt merge their dimension with the radiation-filled blackness which threatened to drown them.
“Let’s get out of here,” muttered La Forge.
“No, we have another experiment to perform.” Data glanced back at the unused Genesis device in the rear of the craft.
Geordi gulped. “What I suggested was only hypothetical. I really don’t want to overload a Genesis box and send it into reverse.”
Data popped the hatch on the shuttlecraft and gathered up his tools to head back into the barren wilderness.
The engineer groaned. “Me and my big mouth.”
twenty-one
The tether stretched two kilometers, and it had been rigged together from at least a hundred shorter lengths. At the far end was a shuttle-craft manned by Data, and at the leading end was Deanna Troi, wearing a Brahms radiation suit. Sh
e gripped the handles of her jet sled and cruised slowly toward the immense blackness. Seen from such a close angle, the rift looked like space—only without stars, nebulas, or any stellar bodies. The void was without even the glittering debris which had characterized it for days. All of that had been consumed by the expanding darkness, as the counselor soon would be.
Troi had fought hard to be allowed to perform this mission, and it had taken Admiral Nechayev overruling Riker to grant permission. Before they attempted to heal the rifts with a reverse Genesis Wave, they had agreed that someone had to explore the other side. Their solution had to help both sides and cause no peripheral damage, taking the chance the cure might be worse than the disease. Then they had to answer the question once and for all—had an accident brought the two dimensions into such perilous contact, or had the incursion from the other side been an attack, as first suspected?
[280] The counselor had been chosen over Data to perform the EVA, because of her empathetic link with the entity which had once ruled the other dimension. She was convinced that that entity was dead, or at least withdrawn. All she sensed was fear—overwhelming fear—and it wasn’t coming from her. Still she was relieved to know that Data was monitoring her vital signs through the tether and would reel her back to the shuttlecraft at the slightest sign of trouble. Of course, if something happened to the lifeline—
“Shuttlecraft to Troi,” said Data’s voice, coming over the tether instead of a comlink, due to the interference.
“I’m all right, Data,” she reported.
“By my calculations, you will enter the event horizon in another thirty-eight seconds.”
“I’m ready,” she answered. “You just be my guardian angel and keep watch over me. Troi out.”
In the final few meters, she could see strange, ungodly shapes writhing in the darkness like eels in a fish barrel. It was as if they were scared to come across, yet scared to remain where they were. And Troi couldn’t blame them. That side was permeated by horrendous radiation; on this side, there was only cold, unfriendly space. Their panic was bad enough when they had come across into inhabitable places, such as the Barcelona, but when they ventured into the vacuum of space, they died in absolute agony.
Troi realized that many of these creatures communicated telepathically, so they must have sensed what happened to those who escaped into her dimension. But to remain behind was certain death. They were dying by the billions and billions, all because humankind had once been foolish enough to play God.
With a blink, she was among them in a startling landscape of billowing blue clouds and a pale pink sky. Four black planets and a gleaming purple sun were aligned in the distance like some kind of solar system seen in a negative image. This dimension teemed with bizarre life, all of it in some kind of frenzied activity, flitting between [281] the black barrier of her dimension and a grim mass of corpses which littered the clouds. Troi had to remind herself that hundreds of these rifts existed along the path of the Genesis Wave, and this was only one place where their dimensions crossed.
With a burst of activity, panicked creatures rammed her jet sled and fouled the thrusters, and they oozed around her like sharks in a feeding frenzy. Still she was unafraid, because they weren’t attacking. She sensed curiosity and a desperate need for help. Like herself, they had ventured to the other side, only with disastrous results. They wanted to know how this creature encased in white could survive in such a monstrous place as the darkness beyond.
Even as she huddled against the sled to keep from getting pelted, Deanna closed her eyes and tried to communicate telepathically. To her surprise, an answer came:
We know you.
“Yes, you do,” she assured the entity, who seemed weak and distracted. “An accident happened ... a terrible accident.”
You killed us.
“No!” she protested. “We can stop it, we can reverse it!”
We are dead.
Overcome by feelings of grief and remorse, Deanna Troi began to cry. “It’s not too late!” she told herself, or anyone else who was listening.
There was no further answer. Sniffing back tears, the Betazoid composed herself enough to say, “Troi to shuttlecraft.”
“Data here,” came the reply.
“Bring me back,” she ordered.
“Are you injured?”
“No, but the sled is damaged. I need to return, and you need to close this rift. By any means available.”
“We will not create any peripheral damage?”
“No,” she answered grimly. “We can’t make matters worse than they already are.”
[282] With relief and sadness, Troi felt herself being pulled back into the darkness, and the creatures squirming around her withdrew in fear. A moment later, she floated in space on the edge of the abyss, and she began to cry again for all those who had perished on both sides of the rift—killed by a machine that was supposed to create life.
Jean-Luc Picard stepped gingerly out of the captain’s yacht onto a foggy planet with crystallized dirt and swirling yellow clouds, through which he could see maybe six meters in front of him. Thunder rumbled ominously from every direction at once, and an acid-filled sleet bombarded him and the crusty soil. He supposed he should be glad he was wearing an environmental suit and couldn’t smell the air, such as it was. Looking around, he found it hard to believe that Solosos III had once been a thriving Class-M planet with a happy colony of Federation citizens. All of that had been destroyed by the Federation itself, and now Solosos III was mired in a trilithium winter.
This entire planet was strewn with hastily abandoned structures and equipment, so there was no use looking at sensor readings. There were enough old power lines, wells, sewers, data lines, and other remnants of infrastructure to disguise a mammoth network of Genesis devices. So they had looked for lifesigns, which were normally nonexistent in this place. It had taken them hours of searching from orbit in the tiny craft, but finally they had spotted lifesigns—about twenty of them, to be exact. As long as the conspirators were still on the planet, he figured, they weren’t quite ready to detonate Genesis yet.
Now time was running out, and Picard wasn’t even sure what he was looking for. His previous orders to continue with his mission made little sense. His superiors didn’t even know what his mission was, although everyone assumed he had run off to secure the Genesis Device in Yorka’s possession. But Yorka might have a million of those boxes by now, and Picard’s true mission had died with Kaylena. [283] To bring back one, a million, or none of the boxes—it hardly made any difference now. At least the cryptic missive from Nechayev had made it clear that they were on the right track—this forsaken place was the next planet in the deadly sights of Genesis.
Footsteps crunched behind him, and he whirled around to see a vague outline in the pea soup fog. He almost fired his phaser, because no one was supposed to be following him. Instead he ducked down and waited, until he saw the suited figure wave to him. It was one of his young comrades, whose names were still a bit vague to him. They dared not use combadges to talk to one another, so he walked stiffly toward his companion.
When they were helmet to helmet, Picard demanded in a muffled voice, “What are you doing? I left word for you to stay put.”
“New orders,” replied the ensign, holding up a padd with text on it.
The captain took the hand-held device and read it. With surprise, he noted that it was from Data. In the android’s usual comprehensive style, there were detailed instructions on exactly what he was supposed to do with the network of Genesis Devices when he found them. There were even diagrams. In essence, he was to patch into the network, reverse the current, and overload it with as much power as he could muster.
It sounded somewhat desperate, but that fit his mood.
“Return to the ship,” he told his underling. “Keep monitoring lifesigns. If you see our quarry leave, let me know immediately.”
“Over the comlink?”
“Yes, if they’re gon
e, it won’t matter. When I contact you, be ready to move.”
“Yes, Sir.” With an awkward salute in his environmental suit, the ensign stole away into the dense yellow fog.
The captain slipped the padd containing his instructions into his pocket and closed it. Then he took out his tricorder and attempted to locate the lifesigns they had spotted from orbit. Their quarry were less than five hundred meters away, toward the southwest.
[284] He took another step and nearly tripped over it—a fat electrical cable which looked undamaged by the catastrophe that had befallen Solosos III. In fact, it looked new, and it led in the direction where the lifesigns were congregated. Picard put away his tricorder and drew his phaser, then he slowly stalked his prey.
After following the cable for about a hundred meters, he found one of the Genesis emitters. It was propped up in the dirt like a fancy trashcan, and the door was open, with the instrument panel blinking ominously. He considered patching into the device right here, but that would no doubt alert Yorka and his party. He would either have to find some way to neutralize Yorka’s crew, or he would have to wait until they were gone. If he waited that long, it might be too late.
Stalking in a crouch, Picard followed the cable until he spotted a shadow in the fog. He instantly threw himself to the ground to create the lowest possible profile. Inching forward on his stomach, Picard reached a spot where he could clearly see his adversary—an armed guard in an environmental suit festooned with insignia of the Bajoran militia. Still lying on his stomach, Picard checked his tricorder to make sure the guard was alone. There was another guard about thirty meters away, but he might as well have been thirty kilometers away in this deadly fog.
Picard drew his phaser, took aim, and fired. The suit dropped to the crusty dirt as though empty. The captain crawled forward on his stomach, grabbed the stunned Bajoran, and dragged him back to a safe position. Then he threw his prisoner over his shoulder and carried him back to the yacht, retracing his tracks in the dirt.
STAR TREK: TNG - The Genesis Wave, Book Three Page 28