by David Mack
“I sure hope not. What I’m seeing has me scared shitless.”
“That makes two of us.” Theriault winced as one of the Wardens erupted from within, releasing a brilliant flash of emerald flames that rendered his body into smoke and ashes. She ducked back behind the corner, pulled Hesh with her, and snapped him out of his horrified trance with a harsh whisper. “Hesh! What the hell was that?”
The Arkenite fumbled with his tricorder, which had been running since they had returned to the village. “I . . . I’m sorry, sir. I, um, can’t explain this data. Bioelectric readings from Nimur are far beyond anything I’ve ever seen. Similar readings are emerging in the Wardens.”
Dastin continued his discreet observation of Nimur. “She’s building an army.” He reached toward his belt and rested his hand on his phaser. “We need to stop her. Now.”
Theriault put her hand on top of Dastin’s. “No.”
The scout looked at her. “Sir, Nimur can already kill anything she can see—and probably a fair number of things she can’t see. We can’t let her get any stronger.”
Seta took hold of Theriault’s free arm. “Your friend is right. Nimur must be stopped.”
“We’re not your assassins,” Theriault said to the young priestess. Then she turned her baleful glare on Dastin. “And this isn’t our fight.”
Seta was desperate. “How can you say that? You’ve seen what she can do. Not even the Wardens can stop her now. We need your help!”
Theriault felt sympathy for Seta and the other Tomol, but she had to remember her duty as a Starfleet officer. “I’m sorry,” she told the frightened teen, “but my friends and I all swore an oath a long time ago not to interfere in the lives of others.”
Her declaration made Seta shake with anger. She pointed at Tormog. “You’ve already interfered! When he and the others helped Nimur escape! Without them, the Wardens could’ve caught her and brought her back to finish the Cleansing while there was still time!”
“We’re not responsible for what the Klingons do,” Theriault said.
Tan Bao sounded doubtful. “I don’t know, sir. We could have stopped the Klingons from helping Nimur, but we let them get away. I think that makes us at least a little bit responsible.” He shrank back and swallowed as Theriault slowly turned a withering look in his direction.
Hesh’s expression turned from concerned to alarmed as he watched his tricorder’s display. “Actually, it might be too late for us to intervene at this stage. If one considers that four phasers set on heavy stun were not enough to subdue Nimur in the cave, and then extrapolates the escalation of her power from the increased levels in her bioelectric and neuroelectric fields, it would seem that no offensive power we possess at this time will be sufficient to stop her.”
Dastin scrunched his face at the science officer’s report. “Are you kidding? Do you really expect me to believe that a phaser set on full power can’t bring her down?”
“At this stage, I would rate its likelihood of success as ‘minimal.’ Such an assault might prove effective against the Tomol in whom she has only just now triggered the Change, but against Nimur herself, I fear such an effort would be futile at best.”
“A concerted attack, then. All four of us, firing on full power—”
“Would have only a nine percent chance of killing Nimur,” Hesh interrupted.
The Trill wasn’t ready to give up. “All right, so sidearms can’t get the job done. But we could use a tricorder to pinpoint her position, relay her coordinates to the Sagittarius, and they can take her out using the ship’s phasers.”
Theriault couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Overkill much?”
“Sir, this bitch ripped five Klingon warriors limb from limb using only her mind, and she left a cave painted with their guts. Now she has ten friends just as crazy and dangerous as she is. If anything, I’d call a precision strike from orbit a proportional response.”
Tormog slurred, “S’what I’d do.”
Theriault gave Tormog a punitive kick. “No one asked you.” She turned and confronted Dastin. “What if she and her friends are powerful enough to sense the Sagittarius? Right now they don’t know about space travel or starships, so they might not think to look for the ship. But if phaser beams start shooting down from the sky, the Changed might expand their new senses to figure out where those attacks are coming from.”
“All the more reason to dust them now and be done with this,” Dastin said.
Hesh shut off his tricorder and stepped between Theriault and Dastin. “Sir, we are presently out of contact with the ship, so soliciting their aid is a non-issue. Furthermore, we have another option. While four phasers set on kill might not possess sufficient firepower to stop Nimur and her Changed allies, those same phasers set for simultaneous overload and used as a localized demolition charge could release enough energy to destroy the Changed.”
Tan Bao held up a hand in a cautionary gesture. “Whoa. It’s a nice idea—in theory. But to make it work, you’d need Nimur and all her new friends in the same place. I mean, really close together. Even with four phasers bundled into one improvised explosive, the instant-kill radius won’t exceed eighteen meters. Against creatures this powerful, I’d expect the effective radius to be as little as ten meters. If they split up, this plan is toast.”
Dastin stole another look around the corner, then ducked back behind cover. “What if we grabbed a few of those lances the Wardens dropped? We could add those to a phaser barrage.”
Theriault shook her head. “Forget it. They hit Nimur with twelve of those things, and she didn’t bat an eye. Those might be useful against someone who’s still early in the Change, but once a subject starts to exhibit real power, those glorified stun-sticks are basically useless.”
A dejected silence settled upon the landing party. Seta grew visibly agitated watching the Starfleet team contemplating their doomed navels. “So, that’s it? You lie down and die?”
Theriault resisted the urge to slap the brash young teen. After all, the girl’s entire world was teetering on the verge of collapse. Who wouldn’t lapse into hysteria under those conditions? Instead, she decided to do what she thought was best for her team, the ship, and the Tomol.
“Okay, new plan. Step one: Gag the Klingon. Step two: We hide.”
17
Sickbay’s door slid open at Captain Terrell’s approach, and he stepped forward—face-first into a tangled web of duotronic cables and optronic wiring. “What in the hell—?”
“Sorry, Captain,” shouted Crewman Torvin from the other side of the wall of data fibers. Terrell couldn’t see the shaved-headed young Tiburonian, he could only hear him. “Had to open up a few junctions to run some bypasses, and, um, putting them back is, um—”
“Complicated?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Time is a factor, Tor.”
“I understand, sir. Hang on.” From behind the veil of duotronic webbing came the scrape of shuffling feet, the harsh spit of raw power dancing off live wires, and the low curses of an enlisted man in over his head while keenly aware of his commanding officer’s waning patience. After nearly half a minute of indeterminate sounds, the spaghetti junction of cables and wires parted to reveal Torvin’s flushed and anxious face. “Almost done, sir.”
He unraveled the Gordian knot of optronics that obstructed Terrell’s path and then pulled aside one half of the cable curtain to grant the captain ingress to sickbay. Terrell ducked through the narrow, temporary gap and looked around, bewildered by the chaos that greeted him.
Sickbay had, as far as Terrell could see, been ripped open on all sides, and its duotronic viscera spilled across its bulkheads and deck, as if the ship’s sole medical facility had been gutted by force. Seated in the middle of all that chaos, hands pressed against the sides of her head and hunched over a small computer terminal wrapped in twisted metal, was Doctor Babitz.
“Do my eyes deceive me, Doctor, or has sickbay committed seppuku?”
&nb
sp; Babitz pointed at Torvin. “His fault.”
Terrell turned to face Torvin, whose face was stretched taut by a nervous grin. “I know this looks bad, sir, but I can explain, really.”
“Don’t let me stop you, Crewman. I would love to hear this.”
Torvin tugged one of his fin-shaped, outrageously large earlobes. “Well, I heard sickbay’s computer activate ten minutes ago. Thing is, we’re on a silent-running protocol—”
Terrell held up a hand to stop Torvin because he understood. “Which restricts computer operations to minimize our energy signature.”
The enlisted engineer nodded. “But then Doctor Babitz said she had priority orders to work on a medical emergency—”
“And she needs the computer to do it,” Terrell cut in. He hung his head in shame; this was his fault. Despite having ordered the ship into silent running, he had directed Doctor Babitz to conduct vital medical research. He was able to guess what had happened next. “So you isolated the sickbay computer from the main core and contained its energy signature.”
“Yes, sir. Well, I mean, I’m doing my best. It’s a work in progress.”
“I trust you’ll be able to put this all back together later, yes?”
“Probably.”
“Carry on, Crewman.”
“Aye, sir. Thank you, sir.” Torvin hurried away, opened another panel on the overhead, and freed a bundle of optronic cables that spilled over him like the entrails of a gutted beast. The young man stumbled, struggled under their weight, and then set to work on a new bypass.
Terrell sidled over to stand beside Babitz’s computer terminal, which was surrounded on five of six sides by a hastily assembled metal framework. The captain flicked his index finger against the crudely assembled encasement. “Dare I ask?”
Babitz shrugged. “It’s based on something called a ‘Faraday cage.’ Tor’s expanding the concept to encompass all of sickbay so I can use the rest of the systems later, if necessary.”
“Looks like a mess. But if it works, I’m all for it.”
Torvin looked across the compartment at Terrell. “It’ll work, sir.”
The captain marveled again at how sensitive Torvin’s hearing was. “Tell me something, Tor. If you’re right, why don’t we design our ships this way to begin with?”
“Because as long as this signal-blocking grid remains in place, sickbay can’t access the ship’s main computer core, and it becomes a blind spot to our internal sensors.”
“Good to know.” Terrell turned back toward Babitz. “What have you got?”
“Nothing good, I’m afraid.” She beckoned Terrell to stand behind her, so he moved to look over her shoulder as she continued. “The challenge isn’t suppressing the Shedai Meta-Genome segments in the Tomol DNA, or even removing them. I could accomplish either with a retroviral gene therapy. The problem is, suppressing or excising those sequences would constitute a fatal alteration to the Tomol’s DNA. It would kill them almost instantly.”
Every new piece of the puzzle magnified Terrell’s concerns. “Why?”
“Because the Meta-Genome sequences appear to have replaced original strings of the Tomol’s DNA. Strings that were essential to their nervous and endocrine systems. Without a map of what those original portions of their genome looked like, we can’t replace them.”
Terrell tensed with frustration. They were close to an answer, he could feel it—he just couldn’t see it. “What about obstructing just part of the Shedai tampering? Shutting down only one or a few of the inserted sequences?”
“I explored that option. Some combinations are just as fatal as removing all the Shedai material. Some partial extractions or suppressions would have no effect. A few might make the Changed even more dangerous, by triggering sequences I think are related to telepathy and other high-level psionic abilities. And at least one would spark spontaneous combustion.”
“Would this apply only to the Tomol who have begun the Change?”
“No. It’s species-wide. I can’t see any way to stop the Change before it starts, or reverse it after it’s begun, without killing the subject.”
“Quite an effective bit of genomic sabotage the Shedai wrought here.”
Babitz’s shoulders slumped. “You’re telling me.” She stared at the genetic riddle on her computer screen. “If the Tomol’s mutation is so unstable, why do the Klingons want it?”
“Why do the Klingons want anything? Because they think it’ll add to their power.” He crossed his arms and thought for a moment. There was something about the Tomol’s dilemma that didn’t add up for him. He thought about the data that the landing party had linked to the obelisk under the hill on the planet’s surface. “What I can’t figure out is why a culture like the Preservers would save a species like this. The first human settlers they had rescued from Earth’s North American continent lived in harmony with nature and were generally peaceful.”
“So are the Tomol, according to Hesh’s preliminary report.”
“True. But if every one of them has the potential to turn into a bloodthirsty monster—”
“I’d say that makes them about average,” Babitz said.
Her cynical observation drew a grim nod from Terrell. “Sadly, yes.”
• • •
Silence was a bad sign. A Klingon warship was a place for hearty laughter, roaring songs, and heated arguments. A quiet warship was one on which something was wrong. Kang was sure of it.
He watched Mara from across the bridge until he caught her eye. She acknowledged his unspoken summons with a rise of her chin, then she parted from tactical officer Mahzh with a curt order and returned to Kang’s side. “Yes, Captain?”
“Have we made contact with the recon team?”
“Not yet, sir. Kyris hailed them on all frequencies, but she reports no response.”
Kang’s vague disquiet was hardening into suspicion. “Have we detected any other communications? On the planet or in this system?”
“None.” Mara stole a glance at the image of the ringed planet on the viewscreen. “You think there is someone else here.” Her eyes narrowed. “Starfleet, perhaps?”
“I don’t know. But it is possible.”
Mahzh looked up from the weapons console. “Captain, we’re picking up unusual activity on the planet’s surface. An energy wave unlike any we’ve encountered before.”
With a sideways nod, Kang sent Mara to check out Mahzh’s report. She stepped around the dais that supported Kang’s command chair and nudged Mahzh aside so she could look at the sensor readouts. “Most unusual.” She adjusted a few controls. “Mahzh is correct. Our memory banks hold no match for this energy waveform.”
“Analysis?”
Mara stepped aside to let Mahzh resume his duties. The weapons officer hunched over the sensor readout, which painted his face with red light. “Very powerful, strongly ordered. Definitely artificial.” He applied some filters and submitted the scans to the computer. “Power source is underground, beneath a large hill on the planet’s only populated island.”
Kang felt a prickling of alarm at the nape of his neck. “The same hill that’s honeycombed with caves?” He looked at Mara. “The recon team was using those caves as a base.”
She looked away, toward the deck, as she often did when she was concentrating. “This sector is riddled with ancient artifacts. Could they have found one and triggered it by mistake?”
Kang had read reports of entire worlds throughout the Gonmog Sector being laid waste or shattered without warning by the fearsome technology of the now-extinct Shedai. Was this another doomsday weapon, left behind to punish the unwary? He wanted to know more about the threat before he settled on a plan of attack. “Get me a detailed scan of that power source.”
Mahzh struggled with the sensor controls, then gave up. “I can’t, sir. There are sensor-blocking mineral compounds in the hill. We can detect the excess energy that escapes from the surface, but we can’t penetrate the bedrock to identify the cause.”<
br />
“So be it. Could those compounds be blocking communications with the recon team?”
“No, but the energy field might be.” Mahzh pressed a few keys at his station, then let out a low growl of satisfaction. “I will try to design a signal-canceling frequency that will negate the energy field’s interference. If that is what is obstructing our comms, this will correct it.”
“Good. Tell me when you’re ready.”
Mara returned to Kang’s side. “There could be another reason the recon team has not made contact.” Her ominous tone had made her implicit message clear: They might be dead.
Kang considered his options. “If we’ve lost the recon team, we’ll need to finish their mission. Put together a landing party, heavily armed. Make sure they know what to look for. If they meet any resistance, they can shoot to kill. We only need to take one test subject alive.”
“Yes, Captain. I can have them on the surface in ten minutes.”
He held up a hand. “No, keep them on standby. If Kyris can raise the recon team after Mahzh cancels the interference, we’ll let them finish their mission, as planned. But if Tobar and his men remain missing in action after the channel is clear, we’ll send in a recovery team.”
“Understood, Captain.”
Mara stepped away to supervise the preparation of the landing party, and Kang returned his attention to the main viewscreen—only to notice that the Voh’tahk’s orbit was shifting. “Helm! Why are we deviating from standard orbit?”
Ortok answered while monitoring readouts on his console. “Emergency course change, sir. Sensors detected an asteroid on a close approach vector. I’ve compensated by increasing orbital range by six thousand qelIqams and adjusting orbital latitude one point nine degrees toward the equator. The asteroid will clear our standard orbital path within the hour.”
The helmsman’s reaction to the threat of an asteroid collision had been in perfect accord with Imperial procedures, but Kang distrusted any new wrinkle in their mission. “Put it on-screen.” Ortok punched in the command. The viewscreen switched to show the asteroid, heading in a slow tumble toward them and the planet. It was a nondescript hunk of rock. Kang regarded it with a wary stare. “Just how large is that thing?”