Star Trek: Typhon Pact 06: Plagues of Night

by David R. George III

  “He loved you too.”

  Ro squeezed Tenmei’s hands, and then pulled her own away so that she could wipe away the tears in her eyes before they spilled down her face. “Of course, I’ll be there. Do you know when this will be?”

  “Not exactly,” Tenmei said. “Within a couple of weeks, I think. I want to wait for Vedek Kira to return from Cardassia, and I’m also hoping that I can persuade Captain Sisko to be there as well. I’ve recorded a message to him to go out with the next comm packet we send to the Robinson.”

  “I’m sure Captain Sisko will be there if it’s at all possible,” Ro said.

  “I think so too.” Tenmei exhaled loudly, almost as though she’d been holding her breath. She slapped her hands down on her thighs and stood up. “Thank you, Captain. I won’t take up any more of your evening.” She headed for the doors, but Ro called after her.

  “Prynn,” she said, but then hesitated. Ro had often tried to bolster Tenmei’s flagging spirits by inviting her to Quark’s, to play a game of springball, to watch a film—to do almost anything—but as far as Ro knew, it had been a long time since Tenmei had done anything personal with anybody. Still, she felt compelled to ask. “I was going to try the new Argelian restaurant. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d love some company.”

  Tenmei looked at her blankly for several seconds, and Ro thought that the lieutenant might not have even heard her. But then, in a small voice, she said, “Okay.”

  “Okay,” Ro said, delighted. She stood up and joined her friend, and together they left her office.

  27

  How long has it been? Trok wondered. Has it even been a day? Two days? Ten?

  He knew that the answer didn’t matter, because a worse question awaited asking: How many days will it be?

  He shifted where he lay on the hard deck of his cabin aboard Ren Fejin. The Jem’Hadar had removed the few pieces of furniture—a bed, a chair—that had once cluttered the small, basic space. Trok didn’t believe that they had done so in order to cause him discomfort, but so that he would have no materials available to help him mount an escape attempt.

  Which is probably why they also took my environmental suit, Trok thought. He peered down the narrow length of his body, covered only by the thin layer of fabric he wore. He shivered, as though just thinking about his missing environmental suit reminded him that he should feel cold.

  But not cold enough, he thought. Without his environmental suit, Trok found the ship’s internal temperature unpleasant, but not unbearable. But for the Amoniri among the crew, the interior of Ren Fejin did not reach anywhere near as cold as they required in order to survive. Trok did not actually know the species of any of the crew members, but the Amoniri and the Paclu dominated not just the Breen Militia, but also civilian spaceflight within the Confederacy. Maybe their cabins are refrigerated, he thought—and hoped. If not, and if the Jem’Hadar had removed the environmental suits of any Amoniri, then those Breen had died. Trok had never witnessed the evaporation death of an Amoniri, but he had heard how much pain they felt as their mostly liquid bodies turned to vapor, how they suffered a slow loss of physical function, and how they ultimately descended into madness before finally dying.

  Trok pushed himself up on the deck and leaned against the bulkhead. His muscles aching, he tested his limbs, first stretching and tensing both branches of his cleft legs, then doing the same with his similarly cleft arms. He did not look healthy. His gray flesh looked desiccated and inflexible, the stipples of the sensory organs on his arms unresponsive. In places, his skin had turned bright pink, the result of injuries sustained at the hands of the Jem’Hadar.

  Well, mostly not the hands of the Jem’Hadar, Trok corrected himself. Mostly their polaron beams. The bulk of the physical damage to his body had occurred during the initial attack on Ren Fejin. He’d lost consciousness while being thrown about the bridge as the ship absorbed volley after volley of polaron blasts.

  After that, Trok had awoken—briefly—in the clutches of two Jem’Hadar. Later, he came to when he felt his environmental suit being ripped from his body. The Dominion soldiers had not handled him gently, but neither had they beaten him. But that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t.

  Trok trembled again, not from the cold, but out of fear. He wanted to feel hope because the Jem’Hadar had so far left him alive, but he didn’t. At that moment, Trok saw no way for him to survive the situation and return home safely.

  It frankly surprised him that he’d woken up at all after the ship had come under attack. He wondered if the Jem’Hadar had tracked the movement of Ren Fejin while supposedly rendered invisible by the phase cloak, or if they had detected Trok’s presence in the industrial plants. Because of the timing of events, he suspected that it had been the subspace message that Beld transmitted that had given up the ship to the Jem’Hadar.

  I guess a contingency plan isn’t much help if it brings a squadron of soldiers bred for war down upon you, Trok thought bitterly. At the same time, it caused him to wonder about the “tertiary plan” Beld had claimed. Was he serious about that? Trok wondered. Was there really a third plan, and if so, was there somebody on board still alive who could—

  The single panel of the cabin’s door slid open. Expecting a squad of Jem’Hadar soldiers, Trok looked over—and froze. From the other side of the threshold, a creature from his nightmares stared back at him with a dozen shining, jet-black eyes. With a pale, segmented body and long fangs flowing with neurotoxins, the rinculus lived along the desert sands of Grevven II, a hellish world within the Breen Confederacy. Though low to the ground, the beast could rear up on its two pairs of hind limbs, bringing it to a greater height than most Breen. Its venom did not kill its prey, but immobilized it, so that the rinculus could then puncture its flesh and devour its internal organs.

  Trok didn’t know what to do. Inside his Breen armor, he could have survived an attack by a rinculus; defenseless and virtually naked, he would live only long enough to feel the brutal predator chewing through his viscera. If Trok could have ended his own life at that moment, he would have, just to evade the terrible pain he knew he would soon suffer.

  In the doorway, the rear legs of the rinculus tensed, as though the creature prepared to pounce. Trok felt his bladder let go, the warmth of his urine spreading beneath his body. He looked to the side, for anything—a weapon, a hiding place, anything—though he knew the empty cabin offered him only a place to die.

  As Trok turned his head, he saw movement from the doorway. He screamed, wrapping his two-pronged arms about his head and rolling into the corner. He pulled his legs up to his body and cowered, waiting for the end, and hoping that death would come quickly.

  Nothing happened.

  Trok did not move, other than breathing in large, desperate gasps. He knew he hadn’t imagined the rinculus, and that if he looked, it would still be there. And if he looked, then it would attack, incapacitate, and consume him.

  Something hot fell on the back of Trok’s neck, and still he didn’t move. Maybe I should move, he thought. He envisioned the razor-sharp fangs on either side of his neck, pushing back against their edges, allowing them to slice easily through his flesh and deliver a merciful death.

  Instead, Trok felt himself hauled upward. His feet left the deck, and yet he continued upward, higher even than the rinculus could have risen on its hind legs. His cranium hit the overhead, and then he hurtled downward, still held by his nape. When his legs struck the deck, the grip on his neck released. Terrified and dazed, he crumpled.

  “Get up, you filthy monoform.”

  A rinculus could not speak. Faint from the impact of his head on the ceiling, Trok looked up from where he lay on the deck in a heap. He did not see the rinculus. Instead, a man stood there, peering down at him from deep-set eyes and a strangely expressionless face. He looked humanoid, but even in his stunned state, Trok knew better.

  “I said, ‘Get up,’” the Founder repeated.

  Trok attempted to position his feet beneath
him and rise, but he felt drained. The blow to his head, his fear, the Jem’Hadar attack, and everything else that had taken place to bring him to that point—all of it had worn him down, had depleted the core of his being as thoroughly as if a rinculus had feasted upon his entrails. He dropped back to the deck. He did not even look back up at the Founder.

  A whorl of motion encircled Trok, bands of glowing matter curling around him. A peculiar sound reached him, like that of deep-water currents. And then the Founder faced him from an arm’s length away, a humanoid head at the end of a serpentine column of coruscant gold.

  “You are the only one left,” said the Founder. “Well, you and the Romulan. The others … the Jem’Hadar say they dissolved into mist.” As he said the final word, the surface of the Founder’s body rippled and changed, shifting from a solid form to an indefinite fog.

  The abilities of the Founder fascinated Trok. He watched the cloud as it hung in the air, his gaze following its changing contours. As he did so, he caught sight of the open door, and for one brief moment, he considered attempting to race through it. But he immediately saw the folly of such an action. The Founder could pursue him in a hundred, a thousand, perhaps an infinite number of ways, and even if somehow Trok eluded the shape-shifter, surely the Jem’Hadar still occupied and controlled Ren Fejin.

  Directly in front of Trok, he saw a section of the cloud roil, until it formed an approximation of a mouth. “Why are you here, I wonder,” the Founder said. “Certainly you could not have been intending to make war on the Dominion in such an insignificant vessel.”

  The fog swirled around as though caught in a vortex, until it spun itself out into the Founder’s humanoid form once more. “Perhaps you meant to destroy the starship-construction facilities on Overne Three.” The Founder glanced around, then said, “Although even that is too ambitious for this ship and crew. Did you mean to steal something from here? Or did you simply wish to test the Romulans’ new cloaking device against Jem’Hadar defenses?”

  “Founder,” Trok said, but before he could say more, the shape-shifter interrupted him.

  “I am not a Founder,” he bellowed. “I am Laas. The Founders are superstitious cowards.”

  The assertion startled Trok. He recalled learning that the Founders, though sometimes encountered as individuals, considered themselves a single, communal being, spending much of their time bound physically together—and presumably intellectually and emotionally together as well—in a shared existence called the Great Link. There had been the case of the Changeling who’d fought with the Federation in the war, but Trok had never heard of a shape-shifter opposing his own people within the Dominion.

  “Laas,” he said, “what do you want from me?” Somewhere deep within Trok, the desire to survive still burned. He thought to bargain for his life, though he knew that he had little to offer the shape-shifter.

  “Want?” Laas said. “From you?” He laughed, a flat, strange sound that contained more contempt than humor. “You have nothing I want—other than perhaps to provide me some diversion. It is an awesome responsibility to lead the Dominion, but it is also a chore. I tire of the monoforms who I’m told I’m meant to protect.” Laas crouched, bringing his eyes down to the level of Trok’s own. “But I have no mandate and certainly no interest in protecting you, or the Romulan, or those to whom you sent your signal.”

  Trok felt his eyes widen as he realized that he’d been correct, that Beld’s transmission had alerted the Jem’Hadar to their presence in the Overne system. He also wondered if the message would bring help—and if so, if that help would arrive in time to rescue him. “Laas,” he said, trying to give himself as much time as he possibly could. “What … what can I do to save my life?”

  Laas stared at Trok, as though measuring him in some way. Then he rose and stepped backward. “There’s nothing at all you can do,” he said, “except start running.” Once more, Laas’s flesh rippled and changed, transforming him. The mass of quivering bio-matter dived toward the deck, spread, and then captured another form.

  Even before Trok saw Laas solidify completely as a rinculus, he found the strength to leap to his feet and bolt from the cabin.

  28

  Picard watched the main viewscreen closely, but he saw only stars spread across space like glistering jewels in the night. Leaning in toward Worf, who sat beside him on the Enterprise bridge, he said quietly, “I cannot refrain from thinking about Romulan cloaking technology.” He paused, then added, “The Eletrix could be anywhere out there.”

  “That would presuppose that Commander T’Jul’s distress signal was not genuine,” the first officer noted, his gaze also riveted to the main viewer. “If the Romulans required aid, they would not seek to conceal themselves from us.”

  “No,” Picard said. “But perhaps it is not the Enterprise from which they are hiding.”

  Worf’s head snapped toward the captain, as though Picard had offered a possibility the first officer had not considered. He quickly stood up and mounted the single step to his right, to where Lieutenant Choudhury crewed the tactical console. “Is there anything at all on sensors?” Worf asked, peering down at the panel.

  “Negative,” replied Choudhury.

  “How many planets are there in the nearby solar system?” Picard asked.

  “Six,” Choudhury said. “Two rocky worlds, and four gas giants.”

  “Are either of the terrestrial planets class-M?”

  “No, Captain,” Choudhury said. “The second planet is class-L, though, with an oxygen-argon atmosphere and some plant life.”

  “Number One?” Picard said, soliciting his first officer’s opinion.

  “It is possible that if the Eletrix was in danger of foundering,” he said, “its crew could have sought refuge there.”

  Picard agreed with Worf’s assessment. “Lieutenant Faur,” he said, “take us to the second planet. Best speed.”

  “Aye, sir,” said Faur.

  As the conn officer adjusted the course of Enterprise and sent it racing through the void, Picard turned to his left, to where Spock sat in the counselor’s chair. “Any thoughts, Ambassador?”

  “Only that I find the apparent disappearance of the Romulan vessel disturbing,” Spock said. “If its crew was truly in distress, then our inability to locate the ship does not bode well for their continued survival. If not, then the cause of peace for which we act similarly seems unlikely to survive.”

  “But you are convinced that Praetor Kamemor’s motives in helping to establish this joint mission, as well as the civilian program in the Gamma Quadrant and the Typhon Expanse, are authentic?” Picard asked.

  “I am,” Spock said. “As we discussed, Gell Kamemor does not seem to be in the mold of typical Romulan leaders—at least not those of recent vintage. Her patriotism does not extend to the need to diminish other species and worlds, but only to maintaining the safety and security of the Romulan Star Empire. She believes that the establishment of endeavors that promote mutual trust with nations formerly viewed as enemies supports that aim.”

  “If only we could be as sure of the goals of Commander T’Jul and former proconsul Tomalak,” Picard said.

  “It is difficult to judge without additional information,” Spock said. “But it is also difficult to envision how transmitting a false distress call to the Enterprise in the present circumstances would aid those in opposition to the praetor.”

  Before Picard could respond, Worf spoke up from where he still stood beside Choudhury at the tactical station. “Captain, we are seeing residual energy readings in the vicinity of the second planet.”

  “Energy readings? Can you characterize it further?” Picard asked.

  “Scanning,” Choudhury said. “I’m reading a considerable amount of antiprotons in the area. It could be the residue of weapons fire.”

  “But not the residue of Romulan weapons,” Picard noted.

  “No, sir,” agreed Choudhury.

  “Perhaps if the Eletrix was ambushed,”
Worf suggested, “they might not have had the opportunity to defend themselves.”

  “Captain, I’m now reading bursts of high-energy radiation near the second planet in the system,” Choudhury reported.

  “Are there any indications of ships in the area?” Picard asked.

  “Negative,” Choudhury said. “But it could mean that the Eletrix ejected its microsingularity somewhere nearby.”

  “Without primary power,” Worf said, “the Romulans would not be able to maintain a cloaking field.” The first officer stepped away from the tactical station and returned to his chair.

  “Which means that if they’re in the vicinity,” Picard said, “we should be able to locate them.”

  “Approaching the second planet, Captain,” said Lieutenant Faur.

  Picard saw a green-and-white globe grow in the center of the main viewer as Lieutenant Elfiki spoke up from her science station. “Reading an oxygen-argon atmosphere,” she said. “Traces of carbon dioxide, considerable water vapor, but little surface water. Vegetation, but no animal life.”

  “Captain,” Choudhury said, “the high-energy radiation appears to be emanating from near the larger of the planet’s two moons. Definitely reading like a microsingularity ejected from a Romulan starship.”

  “Take us there, Lieutenant Faur,” Picard ordered.

  “Aye, Captain.”

  On the viewscreen, the planet drifted downward and to the left, sliding out of view as Enterprise circled around it. Beyond, a small, gray orb rose up from the horizon. Half in the shadow of its host world, it looked pale and lifeless.

  “Standard class-D planetoid,” said Elfiki. “Diameter, approximately seventeen hundred kilometers. Mass, nine-point-one-three times ten to the twenty-first kilograms. Surface gravity, zero-point—”

  “Captain,” Choudhury interrupted, “sensors are showing considerable antiproton residue on the surface of the moon.” She continued to operate her controls. “I’m reading a field of refined metals on the surface.”