by Kem Antilles
Nog looked down at his shake. “And feeding us what we want to eat?”
“Yeah, that, too. So why did they really bring us here?”
Nog shrugged. “Because we’re earning them millions of credits by mining latinum on a hostile planet? And because we’re good at computer games.”
“We’re the best,” Jake agreed. “But what if it’s not a game? And what if it’s not such a hostile planet after all?”
“We know the mining part is for real,” Nog said defensively, then rubbed a blue fingernail along his lips, pondering. “But what about the fighting? What if all that stuff we saw on the simulator screens in the control room is real? What if we’re shooting at real trees, real animals—real people?” Nog chewed on his lower lip.
“They could be running the actual pictures from the planet through video enhancement filters,” Jake said, picking up the thread. “They told us they were using the game screens to add to our enjoyment. Hah! What’s to stop them from converting the real images to colorful gaming screens, so that we don’t think we’re damaging someone else’s planet? Kwiltek could make us see whatever he wanted us to.” He swallowed hard again.
“With a strong motive like profit,” Nog added thoughtfully, “they could be capable of almost anything.”
Jake straightened up as if coming to a decision. “We have to find out,” he said. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?” Nog asked in alarm. “Kwiltek said to stay here! Are we going to try to find the video filters and disable them?”
“No, that would take too long,” his friend said. “I have a better idea.”
“I still think it’s a bad idea,” Nog growled, looking over the controls as Jake stood on the pad in the darkened transporter room. He looked around, half expecting a guard to barge in at any moment.
“I’ll be fine,” Jake assured him. “What could happen in fifteen minutes? Even if the atmosphere is as bad as they say it is, my life-support badge should protect me for that long.” He tapped the badge on his chest. “I go down and look around, and you beam me back up.”
Nog squinted down at the unfamiliar transporter control panel. The backs of his ears tingled, and that wasn’t a good sign. “Four minutes is the most I can leave you down there,” he said.
Jake gave an exaggerated sigh. “Twelve minutes, Nog. This is important.”
“Six minutes, but that’s my best offer,” Nog replied.
Jake shook his head. “I can’t make it in less than ten.”
“Eight minutes, and not a moment more,” Nog snapped.
“Agreed.”
Nog didn’t bother to hide his satisfaction. Jake had learned much about negotiating. “Eight minutes, beginning now,” he said, energizing the transporter. “Good luck, Jake.”
He watched as Jake’s form blurred and scintillated, like a cloud of Numidian glow-flies that faded away to nothingness. Nog locked the coordinates of Jake’s beam-down point into the transporter’s memory and set a countdown timer to alert him when he was supposed to beam Jake back up.
Seven minutes left, he thought. Well, they would not be wasted minutes; he would see what he could do for himself. Nog was a championship hologame player, after all.
Nog moved to the computer screen beside the transporter console. He pushed a button, and it flickered to life. Nog murmured, chuckling at his own resourcefulness. He tapped a few keys, and a small yellow light blinked at the corner of the input pad. The screen said:
ACCESS CODE?
He studied the keypad in front of him carefully and then pressed another button. The tiny light winked off, and the message on the screen said:
ACCESS OVERRIDE ACCEPTED
PLEASE CONTINUE
Nog rubbed his hands together in anticipation, limbering them up as he did when preparing for a very difficult session in the Arcade. Then, working his way along by intuition born of long practice at such things, he brought up level after level of diagrams and ship schematics. “Propulsion systems,” he muttered, nodding as charts and maps flashed before his eyes. “Cargo bays, crew’s quarters…”
He shot a quick glance over at the chronometer. Three and a half minutes left. That should be more than enough, he thought.
Nog looked back at the computer screen and called up the next schematic. It showed the sophisticated transmitters that sent codes from the gaming room down to the mining equipment on the planet below. His breath quickened, and he focused his entire attention on the monitor before him. “There!” he cried in triumph as he saw what he had been looking for. Jake was right! Kwiltek was doctoring the images.
He pressed a button to freeze the screen so he could study it better. Before him lay the schematics for the video links that received transmissions from the planet, shunted them through a series of video-effects filters, and then routed the altered images to the gaming consoles.
Two minutes left, Nog noted with glee, as he wondered what other information he could acquire before Jake returned.
Then he heard a whishing sound behind him He whirled to see an Andorian guard striding through the doorway with a hand-held phaser pointed directly at Nog s head. “Don’t move,” the guard said.
Nog’s scrolled ear ridges contracted painfully, and he raised his hands. “Don’t shoot me! I surrender!”
“You are in a lot of trouble, boy,” the Andorian guard said, stepping to t he transporter control panels, glancing down at them. His antennas quivered. “So, our Earth friend had made an unauthorized excursion to the planet.” He punched in a code and flicked a switch. The countdown timer stopped dead.
The guard gave Nog an unpleasant smile. “His return ticket has just been canceled. And you,” he said, grasping one of Nog’s sensitive ear lobes with his free hand and twisting until Nog howled in pain, “have just been invited to tea with Kwiltek.”
CHAPTER 8
The planet’s surface took shape around Jake as he transported down. He felt a rush of warm, moist air on his face. A tiny pink moon shone brightly in the night sky, casting a rosy glow over the eerie landscape around him.
The steep, hilly terrain looked as if it had been attacked with a giant dull axe. Huge, jagged rips in the ground stood out on all sides, so deep that their bottoms were lost in misty shadows. Immense piles of crumbling, discarded rock stood next to each of the gashes. The destruction could only have been made by giant machines: remotely controlled excavators.
But in the midst of the ruined land stood islands of thick jungle that the video filters back in the mothership’s game room had camouflaged. What those simulations had depicted as crystal canopies of minerals were actually lush growths of purple and ivory foliage. As Jake looked around the horrible, strip-mined landscape, he realized that rain forests had once covered the surrounding slopes.
Kwiltek had lied to them after all, just as Jake had suspected. What he and Nog had seen accidentally on the command center wall screen was real, not just a high-resolution simulation, as the alien had said.
Jake heard a growling, grinding sound in the near distance. He climbed a muddy rise until he looked down at a cluster of harsh white lights—the excavators chewing another slope, hungry for the raw ore buried underneath.
The lush, buzzing forests stood doomed before the machines. Jake had seen images of the giant automated miners on Kwiltek’s wall screen, but he hadn’t realized the excavators were so big!
Clawlike scoops dug deep into soil loosened by broad-beam phasers from the circling flyers. Other excavators worked relentlessly with a deafening grinding and roaring in the jungle night.
But what of the natives he’d seen on the command center screen, battling the machines? They also must be real, and they were engaged in a brave but futile fight to save their home. Jake scanned the surrounding hills, hoping to find some definite evidence of humanoid life before Nog beamed him back up to the mothership.
But Jake saw only ruined land and the shattered stumps of what had once been thick forests. Then, off in the dista
nce, at the foot of a tall bluff, Jake spotted a band of spindly figures. In the pinkish moonlight, he could make out no features, couldn’t even be certain that they were really humanoids. He had to make contact with them somehow, and he had to hurry before Nog beamed him back up. They might not get another chance.
Jake ran as fast as he could toward the clustered figures, through newly cut trenches and past torn slopes deeply eroded from rains. Jake stopped, panting for breath, and wondered why Nog hadn’t beamed him up yet. Surely he’d been here longer than eight minutes.
Maybe Nog had relented and granted him a little extra time. Jake took off running again. But when he once more tired of the constant rugged terrain, he began to get worried. What was wrong with his friend? He couldn’t believe Nog would leave him here so long.
Had the Ferengi boy gotten distracted by playing new simulation games on the main computer? Jake couldn’t believe Nog would just forget about him. At least fifteen minutes had passed, almost twice the time they had agreed on—unless Nog couldn’t help it. Maybe a guard had discovered him in the transporter room and taken him away to face Kwiltek’s wrath.
If that’s the case, Jake thought, what’s going to happen to me?
He told himself not to think about that and started forward once again, skidding and running down an incline toward the natives. They stood silhouetted against a clump of forest as yet untouched by the mining machines.
The figures noticed him in the moonlight, pointed, and gestured to each other. Their mouths moved, but Jake couldn’t hear a thing above the low-pitched roar of the excavators.
If Nog had been discovered and taken away, Jake was stuck here until Kwiltek chose to bring him back. Cold fear flowed like ice in Jake’s veins. What if he had to spend the rest of his life on this ruined world? He might never see his father again, or Nog, or even Deep Space Nine.
Jake forced those thoughts from his mind. He had to act, do something useful. That’s what his dad would have done under the circumstances. He had to reach the natives and see what he could find out. It was slow going as he fought his way up the steep slope, and the slippery mud squished under his feet. He fought his way closer to the humanoids, but every moment he expected to feel the buzzing, tingling sensation of the transporter.
It never came. With each minute, he lost hope for a simple rescue.
The planet’s dawn broke over the horizon, a large red-orange sun emerging above the forest canopy. The sun was barely up before the air temperature began to warm noticeably.
As he approached the excited band of natives, Jake noticed several fuzzy spheres in their midst. The fur balls unexpectedly flew up into the air from time to time, then drifted back down again. No one seemed to throw them; they just took off on their own.
The slender natives waited to meet Jake, openly apprehensive as he approached. He knew that the Federation strictly followed its most important rule, the Prime Detective, which forbade any Federation citizen from interfering with other planetary societies. But, he thought angrily, Kwiltek’s mining company was already interfering—no, they were exploiting this beautiful world. Kwiltek had already done plenty of damage, and it was up to Jake to help the natives somehow.
As he climbed over the lip of the gully, Jake finally came face to face with the inhabitants of this supposedly dead and hostile world.
Like a trapped animal, Nog paced his quarters, formulating a plan of action. He had to find some way to rescue Jake.
He was no longer chagrined that stony-faced Kwiltek had placed him under house arrest with an Andorian guard outside the door.
“You are dismissed from our employ,” Kwiltek had said, setting down his narrow teacup, his emerald-green scale-feathers flattening against his beaked head “No more profits for you. You will remain confined to quarters until I decide what to do with you.”
Pleading and terrified, Nog had tried to assure Kwiltek that if they just brought Jake back from the surface, both he and the human boy would promise never to reveal the mining company’s trade secret. But Kwiltek had not listened. The birdlike alien had not even been willing to negotiate.
What if Kwiltek was devising some awful way to ensure his silence? Staging a terrible accident? Or did Kwiltek have some kind of illegal machine to erase his memory? Nog shuddered at the thought of anyone tampering with his brain, erasing all the business knowledge he had compiled in the past fifteen years. He could be ruined for life.
He stopped abruptly at the food replicator slot, gnashing his sharp teeth. He was not about to let that happen.
“Antarian shake,” he growled, “mixed fruit. Make that a double.” Jake would have approved. Jake, he thought, taking a gulp of the shake when it appeared. He had to find a way to stop the mining machines down there before his friend got hurt. Nog had to rescue Jake from the hostile planet.
He smiled, relishing the challenge as his brain clicked into overdrive. He finished off the Antarian shake, set down the glass, and rubbed his hands together. He would make the mining company think twice about trying to profit at the expense of a Ferengi again!
Nog’s door, still locked from outside, did not open at his approach. He placed one large, sensitive ear against the cool metal and listened. The Andorian guard outside shuffled his feet and coughed. Nog shrugged. Didn’t Rule of Acquisition Number 92 say there were many paths to profit? He shook his head at the naïveté of the guard. There was always more than one path.
Mentally reviewing the diagrams of the mothership he had seen in the computer, Nog climbed onto his sleeping pallet and began to remove the brackets that held the cover of the air duct in place. He couldn’t believe Kwiltek had been so sloppy, but Nog would take advantage of the opportunity. He knew exactly where he had to go and what he had to do.
CHAPTER 9
Jake had seen humanoids from hundreds of systems come through Deep Space Nine, but he had never seen a race as strikingly beautiful as the ethereal folk who stood before him.
Even the tallest of the natives was half a head shorter than Jake. He was accustomed to many of the species on Deep Space Nine towering over him, but now he felt like the giant.
The natives were slender, with arms and legs so thin they looked fragile. Their skin was pink and very smooth, shiny like the surface of a fine ceramic vase. Their heads were round and devoid of hair except for a knot of fine, silky red strands sprouting from the crown and cascading down one side of the face. Around the base of this topknot, each native wore a band studded with sparkling blue stones.
Their noses, chins, and cheekbones were all delicately sculpted, giving them the look of carefully crafted dolls. Their eyes were huge and round, a gemlike blue that matched the bands around their topknots. At the natives’ feet huddled the large furry balls Jake had seen before, now motionless.
All the natives wore sensible dress for the hot climate: sleeveless tunics that ended around mid-thigh. The fabric was woven from a soft brown material, the same shade as the fur on the bouncing spheres.
Jake greeted the small group, opening his hands to show that he carried no weapons. “I’m from the Federation station Deep Space Nine,” he explained.
“What is a Federation?” one native asked in a surprisingly rich and deep voice for someone so tiny. The Universal Translator in Jake’s comm badge picked up the alien’s questioning tone.
Jake was amazed to meet someone who had never heard of the Federation, even here in the Gamma Quadrant. “It’s a group of worlds that have joined together for mutual trade and protection.”
Another of the natives turned to him and said incredulously, “There are other worlds besides our own?”
Still another looked beyond Jake, his face very angry as he pointed to the rumbling mining machines ripping apart the landscape. “Are those new monsters part of your Federation?”
When the native asked, the furry ball at his feet made a buzzing, growling sound and leaped back toward the protection of the forest. The furry ball was alive!
“Thos
e are excavators,” Jake answered. “They’re not monsters. Just machines.”
The natives turned their big blue eyes toward each other in confusion. “But how can they not be alive?” said the first one who had spoken. “Everything on Citra is alive—our forests, our mountains. How can dead things crawl through our forests, devouring them?”
“Living people guide them from a distance,” said Jake. “They’re the ones responsible.”
“Like we oversee our bangas,” mused the leader, looking down at one of the furry balls. “Why do people do such a thing? Why do they destroy our beautiful world?”
Jake swallowed, not wanting to justify the mining corporation’s actions, just to explain them. “Because the metal they take out of the ground is worth a fortune. The latinum brings them great power back on their home worlds.”
The leader shook his pink head, not understanding. His long red topknot switched from side to side. Another of the natives came forward, looking earnestly at Jake. Unlike the uniformly pink leader, this one—a female—had dark blue shoulders.
“You know about these excavator monsters? Can you stop them? So many of us have died.” The girl looked at the torn-up dirt at her feet, shoulders slumping. “My mother fell into a monster’s mouth as she tried to stop it from ripping through one of our fields. I will never forget her scream.”
Jake’s throat tightened with remembered hurt to hear such a tale. He had lost his own mother when the Borg had attacked the Federation.
“I’m very sorry. I know a little about those machines. Perhaps I could help you fight them better. If you can propel a good-sized illurium shape charge into the excavator’s—” he began. But the natives’ blank expressions told him that they had no such thing as illurium. “Or perhaps a disrupter beam aimed at…” No, I guess they don’t have one of those, either. “What weapons do you have?”