STAR TREK: TNG - The Genesis Wave, Book Two

by John Vornholt

  By the downcast faces, lowered heads, and muttered complaints, it looked like a crowd that had seen the home team lose the game. They were stunned, wondering how in the universe this could have happened to them. The endless canopy of misshapen trees, dripping with moss, did nothing to cheer their souls, and the waterfall sounded like the roar of the victorious team.

  We’ll have to stop for the night, she thought gloomily. Most of them still had enough freeze-dried rations and water not to starve, but it was already damp and getting colder. Now Dolores wished she had forced them all—somehow—into making shelter instead of undertaking this mad trek.

  A voice ahead of her shrieked, and the geologist whirled on her heel and peered into the gloom. She reached for her tool belt, grabbed a flashlight, and shined a beam into the shadows. At first, she thought it was snowing heavily, because puffs of darkness were falling from above. With a start, Dolores realized it wasn’t snow but the moss that was falling; a second later, a wispy tendril brushed along her hair and face, and she suppressed a scream.

  She looked up, squinting. For some ungodly reason, the trees were shedding layer after layer of the thick moss, and it floated downward like a gossamer net. Dolores quickly drew her knife and calmly sliced through the stuff as it cascaded down, but others around her screamed and tried to flee.

  “Stay calm!” she shouted. “You can cut right through it!”

  All of a sudden, Geordi La Forge appeared in front of her, staring into her eyes as if he had never seen a human being in his entire life. His ocular implants glowed like two orbs of ectoplasm, and his arms reached out for her. From his gaping mouth came the homey smell of her mother’s rhubarb pie baking in the oven.

  “Geordi!” she muttered, overcome by a combination of confusion and relief. “What are you doing here?”

  “I love you,” he answered, sounding the wrong inflections, as if he were speaking for the first time in his life. He wrapped his arms around her, only they weren’t entirely arms, because part of his limbs felt like a prickly thorn bush.

  Instinctively, Dolores brought her knife upward in a slashing motion, ripping through Geordi’s gut. The being in front of her turned into clumps of moss, which fell apart like a poorly built scarecrow. Instantly, another Geordi La Forge rose up from the forest floor, leering at her with a demented smile.

  Now Dolores screamed. Gasping for breath, she tried to run, but more of the gray shroud engulfed her as it floated downward. She stumbled and fell over others who were underfoot, and the weeds and slush became a quagmire of terrified Bolians. With horror, she stared at a woman who was smiling and cooing while she fondled a pile of the smothering moss.

  Dolores struggled to get to her feet, but it seemed as if every breath she took only made her weaker. She slashed ineffectually with her knife at the clinging tendrils, but they engulfed her like a downy comforter. As the seconds crawled past, Dolores forgot why she was struggling, when sleep would be so welcome.

  “We’re only going to rest for a few minutes,” she said to no one in particular. Darkness descended over her mind and the misty forest at the same time, as blankets of moss continued to float down.

  seven

  “Myrmidon,” said Commander Jagron, motioning to the elaborate viewscreen on the bridge of the Romulan warbird D’Arvuk. “The dark areas are swamps; the lights you see are not cities, but volcanoes.”

  Captain Picard gazed at an olive-colored planet peeking through a haze of ominous gray clouds. The ugly globe looked as if it had been splattered with gobs of ochre, which meant it had swamps the size of oceans. Glowing embers of light sprinkled the primitive landscape, and there was a ring of volcanoes around the equator. The poles looked like frozen whitecaps shrouded in clouds. Jean-Luc Picard had seen a lot of planets in his life, but few more foreboding than this one.

  “Are there any life-signs?” he asked.

  The Romulan commander turned to the officer standing at the science station, and he pursed his lips. “The magnetic poles have yet to stabilize, and electromagnetic interference is making identification difficult. But there are many life-signs—the planet is teeming with life.”

  Data stepped closer to the science station and gave the display a look. The Romulan officer promptly angled his back, cutting off the android’s view of his screen.

  “Thank you, Commander Jagron,” Picard said with sincerity. “You’ve fulfilled your promise and have gotten us back here without incident. I’m extremely impressed by your technology.”

  The cadaverous Romulan continued to stare at the dusky planet on the viewscreen. “And I’m impressed by your technology.”

  “Unless I am mistaken,” said Data, “you cannot operate transporters while cloaked. How will we effect rescue?”

  “You are mistaken,” said Jagron with a smile. “We can’t operate normal transporters, but we have a special transporter setting that is synchronized with our interphase generators. We can only transport one person at a time, over short distances, but we can get you to the surface and back.”

  “Is the planetary atmosphere stable?” the android asked.

  “As a matter of fact, it is,” answered Jagron. “That’s an interesting feature of the Genesis Wave matrix—the planet returns to normal quicker than the surrounding space. If we had a low enough orbit, we might be able to launch a shuttlecraft.”

  “You’ve learned a lot about the Genesis Wave,” said Picard, impressed.

  “I’m a quick study.” Jagron turned to a phalanx of six guards wearing skull-hugging metal helmets. “With your permission, I’d like to bring this security detail with us to the planet’s surface.”

  Picard blinked in surprise at the tall Romulan. “You’re coming down there with us?”

  “Yes,” answered Jagron. “My government wishes to know what’s down there, too.”

  Data cocked his head. “Since combadges may not work, and we can only send one person at a time, I suggest that I go first. Then you can transport me back to deliver a report.”

  The commander put his hands behind his back and considered the request. “Very well. But we won’t be able to identify anyone on the planet, so we’ll have to set up a blind transporter pad. Anyone who steps onto the pad will be beamed back automatically.”

  “That solution represents security problems,” observed Data.

  Jagron smiled and motioned to his six brawny centurions. “That’s why they’re going.”

  “We’ll need warm clothing,” said Captain Picard.

  “It’s all in our main transporter station. Shall we go?” With a regal wave of his hand, Commander Jagron led the procession off the bridge of the Romulan warbird.

  Geordi La Forge shivered, even though he was sitting a meter away from a pile of hot, glowing rocks. Admiral Nechayev slept peacefully beside him, covered with both of their emergency blankets. La Forge picked up his phaser and shot a beam at the rocks in his pile, heating them back up to white-hot. But it made very little difference in the way he felt, and he finally decided that it was the oppressive darkness that was making him shiver.

  Their lanterns didn’t penetrate far into the gloom, and they only had a circle of light about twenty meters across. Beyond this fragile pool of light, the darkness wrapped around them like the feathered wings of a great vulture. Cloying fog drifted across the riverbed, carrying odors that brought back memories of the misshapen creatures dwelling in the mires. Although Geordi could have sworn the forest was quiet during the day, at night it was a cacophony of dripping, slurping sounds.

  Their banishment to this place was an odd reward, he thought, for the people who had saved the population, if not the planet. For the sake of irony, though, it made sense. Leah Brahms had warned him repeatedly that no one could live on Myrmidon after the Genesis Wave, and now he was forced to prove her wrong. Or right.

  Will I ever see Leah again? he wondered. With a start, he realized that she wasn’t as important to him now as she had been yesterday. He had found her, held he
r in his arms, and made sure she was alive. In doing so, he had finally seen the woman with her shields down. Who knew her marriage was a sham? Who knew she had to struggle for happiness and balance in her life, like everyone else? No longer was Leah Brahms the ideal lover, companion, and brilliant physicist all in one beautiful package. She was just as prone to bad luck and bad decisions as the rest of them.

  She was just a human being.

  Dolores Linton, on the other hand, was a superior human being. That much he now realized. Of course, she also had a wanderlust, a craving for adventure, and an unfortunate aversion to spaceships. She wasn’t the answer to all his prayers, but he sure longed to have those strong arms wrapped around him right now.

  With a sigh, Geordi stared off into the velvety darkness, in the direction where Dolores and fifty thousand survivors had trudged off hours ago. He kept expecting them to return, saying they had been to the village, and it wasn’t any better than the riverbed. Unfortunately, that fantasy wasn’t going to happen, because they probably wouldn’t reach Quonloa until tomorrow, even with Dolores as their guide. He doubted whether any of them would want to make the return trip right away.

  So he listened to the night. La Forge wasn’t sure when the random sounds emanating from the blackness shifted into a pattern—a kind of rhythm. But they did. As he listened, Geordi began to think he heard marching ... or, rather, the shuffling of feet. A great many feet. He lifted his lantern and waved it at the darkness, but it was like trying to light all of space with a flare gun.

  That’s when he saw them. La Forge grinned and leaped to his feet. They had returned! Wave after wave of humanoid shapes came plodding through the forest, shuffling their feet. It was hard to make them out clearly, and he wondered if his ocular implants were malfunctioning somehow. That’s all I’d need, he thought ruefully, to have my vision go on me.

  “Over here!” he called, waving his lantern as if they couldn’t see the only light in the forest. Wordlessly, the strange shapes kept marching toward him, the lantern light glinting off their bald, blue heads. As they drew closer, he saw one in the lead who wasn’t a Bolian—it was a shapely female with tresses of auburn hair falling to her shoulders.

  “Dolores!” he called, happiness and relief mixing with worry. “You’ve come back ... Is everything all right?”

  She moved into the light, dragging her feet as if she was very tired. The others slowed down and finally stopped altogether, just outside the circle of light. It didn’t matter, because Geordi’s attention was riveted on the beautiful geologist.

  He rushed forward to meet her and gripped her in his arms, while she gave him a tender hug back. She nestled her head on his shoulder. It didn’t matter that they were surrounded by thousands of people in the middle of a bizarre wilderness.

  Geordi lifted her chin to kiss her, and she purred, “I love you.”

  Without warning, a phaser beam streaked from the darkness. Dolores exploded, chunks of her flying in every direction, and a scream froze in Geordi’s throat. His initial horror was replaced by utter disbelief, because her blasted corpse looked like a piñata full of shredded newspapers and confetti, fluttering down.

  “What the—?” he gasped, whirling in the direction of the shot. To his astonishment, he saw Data standing there with a calm expression and a drawn phaser. The android turned and leveled the weapon at the crowd of Bolians who were creeping forward from the darkness. To Geordi’s astonishment, they stopped and stood perfectly still, and their chemical composition seemed to change before his implants. Standing as still as hedgerows, now they looked more vegetable than animal.

  “I am sorry to have startled you,” said Data. “You were under attack, were you not?”

  Geordi hurriedly wiped his mouth and spit. “Yes, I guess I was. But I thought it was Dolores Linton!”

  The android cocked his head. “You have been without a girlfriend for too long.”

  “No, seriously, I thought it was a human being!” insisted Geordi. “It was a shape-shifter, or I was hypnotized ... or something.”

  “Its shape never shifted,” Data said with certainty. “Its mass changed after I shot it, but it remained some sort of animated vegetable matter.”

  Data picked up a sprig of the mistletoelike plant from the ground. “I will analyze this, but right now, we must leave. I see that Admiral Nechayev is injured.”

  “Yes,” said Geordi, leaning protectively over the admiral. “She almost died, but she’s—”

  “Put down that phaser immediately,” ordered a voice that sounded exactly like Captain Picard.

  The captain was suddenly standing in front of Geordi, and just as suddenly, Data blasted the apparition to pieces. “You are in grave danger,” he said. “You must transport up immediately.”

  With a rustling sound, the horde of Bolians stepped toward him, and La Forge blinked, trying to clear his vision and his mind. Something grabbed him by the back of his neck and lifted him off his feet. It wasn’t until Geordi opened his eyes that he saw it was Data, holding him like a bag of garbage.

  “You are leaving now,” said the android, striding toward a glowing disk in the distance. Several of the Bolians shambled into his path, but he pulverized them with his phaser. A few others he clubbed into piles of rubbish.

  “But I can’t leave!” insisted Geordi. “The admiral needs help ... and Dolores Linton is out there somewhere! They’re all in danger!”

  “I know,” said the android, never slowing a step or pausing in his slaughter of the creatures, which looked like Bolians. “We can only transport one at a time, and you will go first. Tell the captain that Admiral Nechayev will follow you, and I will come last. I believe both of you will need medical attention.”

  “But—” There was no further discussion, as Data placed him on a glowing disk set into the ground, surrounded by gel packs. The engineer was instantly transported to an unfamiliar room, and he staggered from a transporter chamber to be caught by a brawny Romulan. The guard wrinkled his nose at the human’s frightful appearance and smell, then dropped him to the deck.

  “The admiral is coming next,” La Forge managed to blurt out. “She’s unconscious.”

  “Step aside,” ordered Captain Picard, muscling his way through the helmeted and regally bedecked centurions. “Good to see you, Mr. La Forge.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Geordi breathed, just as a slight figure wrapped in blankets appeared on the transporter platform. She tumbled into the captain’s arms.

  Picard cradled the admiral and laid her on the deck, then looked up at his Romulan hosts. “She needs medical attention.”

  A Romulan commander stepped forward, tapping an insignia that joined two of his opulent belts. “Commander Jagron to the Medical Center. Send a medteam to the main transporter station. Situation: urgent.”

  “Thank you,” said Picard, his eyes steely cold. He turned to look at Geordi. “Are you all right?”

  The engineer nodded weakly. “Physically, I’m okay. I’m shaken up ... over something that just happened.”

  “And Data?”

  “Yes, he should be coming soon. But he’s immune to them.”

  “Them?” Picard asked warily.

  La Forge nodded slowly, still unable to believe what he had seen. “There are creatures on the planet—they can hypnotize you into thinking they’re people. One of them looked like you, Captain. It’s some kind of plant that can move around, like Piersol’s Traveler. I’m afraid for everyone left down there.”

  The captain nodded gravely and looked down at the fragile figure of Admiral Nechayev, still sleeping peacefully on the deck. Geordi could tell from the captain’s puzzled expression that he had noticed the smoothness of her healed skin.

  “What happened to the admiral?” he asked.

  Before Geordi could fashion an answer, there came a flash, and Data appeared in the Romulan transporter. The android stepped down, holstering his phaser. “I suggest you turn off the automatic transporter pad.”


  “At once,” Jagron answered, nodding at the operator.

  “Are you well, Geordi?” asked Data.

  “I’m okay,” answered the engineer. “Thanks for saving me. But there are so many others down there! You saw those creatures ... they looked like Dolores Linton and Captain Picard! How could they do that ... how did they know?”

  “They may be telepathic, capable of reading your mind.” The android turned to Captain Picard. “I have a theory about what happened to Dr. Crusher and her crew.”

  “Go ahead,” the captain answered gravely. La Forge saw Commander Jagron lean into the conversation, to make sure he didn’t miss a word.

  “I took some tricorder readings before I left,” Data began, “and the creatures exude the same fungus that infected Dr. Crusher and the crew of the Neptune. I believe this fungus rapidly infects the brain, producing the hypnotic effect that Commander La Forge has described. It produces delusions, too. In fact, it may produce whatever mental state the creatures desire. They may be parasitic in nature, using this euphoric effect to control the host organism.”

  “Dolores!” Geordi exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “Captain, we’ve got to go back down there.”

  Before Picard could reply, a Romulan medical team barged into the transporter station. They looked to their commander for orders, and he motioned to Nechayev. The admiral was soon taken from the captain’s care and loaded onto a gurney.

  “Are we going to have to quarantine my ship?” asked the commander, sounding quite calm about the possibility.

  Captain Picard looked frankly at his counterpart. “We’re just starting to learn the truth about our enemy. My ship is already infected, and this may explain what happened to a missing crewman of ours.”

  “What happened to Dr. Crusher?” asked La Forge, trying to get control over his emotions. It was suddenly clear that they couldn’t send rescue parties back to the planet, unless they had an army of inorganic androids, like Data.

  Briefly, the captain explained about the Neptune and its unexpected attack on the planet. Commander Jagron’s eyes narrowed, and his jaw worked furiously as he listened.