by Dayton Ward
Crusher stared openmouthed at the normally reserved physician, who was now glaring with unfettered hostility at the EMH, his jaw clenched, and breathing heavily through his nose. Elsewhere in the room, all of the medical staff had stopped whatever they were doing and turned toward the sound of the outburst.
“Gentlemen,” Crusher said, her voice hard as she stepped forward to regain control of the situation, “moving them back to the colony probably won’t be any more detrimental to their condition than leaving them here.” She turned to Tropp. “Doctor, please coordinate the movement of the patients back to a medical facility of the Dokaalan’s choosing. I’m going to have Captain Picard secure permission for me to remain with them and monitor their condition. If there’s any change, I’ll inform you immediately.”
“And what should I be doing?” the EMH asked.
“Deactivating,” Crusher snapped. “Computer, end EMH program.”
The holographic doctor had no chance to say anything in rebuttal before he flickered and faded from existence, leaving Crusher and Tropp alone with their newest patient. Looking down at the prone form of the Dokaalan healer, Crusher shook her head. “I’m sorry, Nentafa,” she whispered. “I feel like I’ve failed you.”
Glancing around the isolation area, she grimaced at the sight of the patients in their weakened condition, with too many indicators on their medical monitors blinking warning red. Was she helping them—or forsaking them—by sending them back to their own hospital?
“Doctor,” Tropp said, “it might be prudent for me to continue our research here. In the event we do find a new course of treatment to try, there would be nothing to stop us from administering it at the colony’s hospital.”
Crusher was unable to resist regarding the Denobulan with a look of mock suspicion. “A minute ago you said we were out of options and that there was no chance of finding anything new.”
Shrugging, Tropp replied. “I was simply trying to get the EMH to shut up. Have I mentioned yet how much I despise those things?”
Despite all the frustration and tension and feelings of helplessness that had consumed her during the past several hours, Beverly Crusher allowed herself a welcome laugh.
Maybe we’re not finished here just yet.
Chapter Twenty-five
THOUGH HIS SMILE might say otherwise, Lieutenant Diix was not a happy person.
“And this is the matter-antimatter reaction assembly, or what we call the warp core,” the Andorian engineer said, walking backward with his arms up and pointing with both hands toward the massive pulsing cylinder that was the dominant feature of the Enterprise’s engineering section. “It is the very heart of the ship. In addition to being our primary source of propulsion for faster-thanlight travel, it also provides power for many of our other onboard systems.”
While it was not a verbatim recap of information found in the ship’s technical specifications, Diix knew it was more than enough for his audience. That it might take months if not years for these people to even begin grasping the concepts behind modern warp-drive technology did not seem to dampen their enthusiasm. The group of Dokaalan guests had listened with rapt attention from the moment they had stepped aboard the ship, all fifteen of them hanging on his every word.
Or was it twenty? Diix had not bothered to count. It was bad enough that he had been sentenced to the role of tour guide. Hall monitoring would simply rub salt in the wound.
And if that were not enough, he and the rest of the engineering staff had to deal with modified special life-support requirements in deference to the Dokaalan contingent. While some of the other engineers enjoyed bounding about the room in the reduced gravity, it was definitely not one of Diix’s preferred pastimes. Why had he been picked for this task? There were other engineers on staff who were better suited to playing host for the delegation, and Commander La Forge knew that.
Perhaps he should be grateful for the assignment and consider that it, like everything else they had discovered since the Enterprise’s arrival in the Dokaalan system, was actually an unexpected and welcome deviation from what many believed would be a tedious mission.
All that changed, of course, after the discovery of the Dokaalan mining outpost and the hundreds of people stranded there. The boring, pointless mission was gone now, replaced by a unique opportunity to learn about a group of incredibly resilient people. His admiration for the Dokaalan had only grown upon learning that they, working with a level of technical knowledge more than two centuries behind that of the Federation, had charged headlong into an endeavor as daunting as terraforming a planet. As an engineer, Diix could not wait for the chance to examine the technology they had literally invented out of necessity in order to realize such a grandiose dream.
He was disappointed that Commander La Forge had not selected him for the away team to Ijuuka on an inspection tour of the Dokaalan’s atmospheric processors. There would be other opportunities, of course, but that did not help him right now, not as he was attempting to explain the inner workings of the Enterprise’s warp drive.
I should be thankful, he decided as he finished glossing over the finer points of the propulsion system and his audience continued to regard him with silent wonderment. They could have spent the last hour asking all manner of inane questions.
He retracted the thought a moment later.
“What is antimatter?” asked one Dokaalan.
“How fast does your ship travel?” inquired another.
“What do your antennae do?”
It was a supreme act of willpower for Diix to retain his fixed smile. Taking a moment to insure that no anger would reveal itself through his voice, he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our tour. I’m afraid my duties won’t let me stay with you any longer, but the engineering staff will be happy to answer all of your questions. Thank you for your time.”
Finished with his presentation, Diix turned and headed without preamble to the chief engineer’s office. Even as he crossed the room toward the small alcove and the sanctuary it offered, he smiled as he watched the enthusiastic Dokaalan converge on those members of the engineering staff not fast enough to get out of sight before being cornered by one of their visitors.
His own respite would be short, however. With Commander La Forge off the ship, Diix was in charge of engineering until his return. That meant making sure the duty roster was up to date and that any assignments tasked for the current duty rotation were completed before the shift change.
The door to the office opened, but Diix stopped at the threshold as he realized that the room was not empty.
“Lieutenant Tyler?” he said to the young human woman seated behind the desk and working intently at the computer terminal. “What are you doing here?”
Tyler had flinched visibly at the sudden opening of the door. It was obvious that she was as surprised by Diix’s arrival as the Andorian was to see her in the first place. For a fleeting second the human’s expression almost seemed to be one of guilt, but for what reason?
“I’m preparing the deuterium consumption report,” Tyler said, her eyes shifting to the computer console, which Diix noted had been turned from its customary position so that its face could not be seen from the door.
Surprised by the answer, Diix shook his head. “Commander La Forge told me to do that.”
“I see,” the other engineer replied. There was a slight pause where she said nothing else, instead tapping a command string into the computer terminal before rising from her seat. “I guess we have some kind of misunderstanding, then.”
His eyes narrowing in suspicion, Diix stepped farther into the office, the door closing behind him. “I should say so. The assignments are clearly indicated on the duty roster. I was given the task of preparing the deuterium report, and you were supposed to be on the detail replacing that port nacelle power coupling. If there has been a change in the assignments for today, I have not been informed.” He was not surprised when Tyler moved to block him from coming around the des
k. Obviously she did not want to see whatever was displayed on the computer terminal.
Surprise did come, however, when the human calmly reached out and plucked Diix’s combadge from his chest.
“What the hell are you doing?” he exclaimed. He instinctively reached to grab the communicator back, noticing for the first time that the other engineer was wearing a phaser. There was no time to ask why before Tyler drew the weapon and fired.
The orange beam enveloped the Andorian and his body disappeared.
Using a phaser on such a powerful setting would normally have registered with the ship’s internal security sensors. Kalsha remembered this fact only the moment after deciding the Andorian would have to be killed in order to preserve the security of the mission. Thankfully, it had taken little effort to encode an override to the security grid capable of blinding the sensors to his weapon’s use. He wondered if he would have time before leaving the ship to learn why these people insisted on storing weapons anywhere but a designated armory. Such information might prove useful during future operations.
It is a question for another time. Continue with your mission.
One positive aspect of killing the Andorian was that Kalsha would now be able to assume the form of the dead engineer. That at least was a less risky proposition than continuing on with his impersonation of the human. Moving so that he was not visible through the window, Kalsha reached for his left wrist and tapped it. The human woman’s pinkish skin and the dark material of her uniform vanished, replaced by the metallic exoskeleton of his mimicking shroud.
The body-enveloping garment was a most-favored tool of those in his particular profession, having proven quite useful during many of his past assignments. Even in its natural state, the shroud provided effective camouflage for nighttime operations, but its true value lay in its array of built-in sensors and holographic emitters. When activated and used properly, they provided the shroud with the means to replicate nearly any humanoid form.
It had allowed him to assume the form of a Dokaalan visitor, blending in with the rest of the contingent as they were led through the Enterprise and allowed to inspect some of the ship’s most sensitive areas, waiting for his chance to get to the chief engineer’s office and the relative privacy he needed for the next phase of his mission. Clearly, the ship’s crew did not believe these people might be engaged in any kind of suspicious activity. Such trust and complacency would yet prove to be their undoing.
Embedded in the garment’s left arm was the shroud’s control pad. Kalsha tapped a key and compact digital text began to scroll on the pad’s miniaturized display screen. When he found what he wanted, he entered another command and the shroud’s emitters came to life once more.
An effective technique imparted long ago by his instructors was always to keep the shroud’s passive sensors activated in order to scan anyone he encountered while on assignment. After all, one never knew when it might be necessary to disable a subject and quickly assume that person’s identity. Now, for example.
In response to his commands, the Starfleet uniform rematerialized. This time, however, his skin was blue, his hair white instead of black, and antennae jutted from the top of his head.
You make a fair Andorian, Kalsha decided as he reviewed his new appearance in the reflective surface of a deactivated monitor set into the office’s rear wall. He had re-created the engineer down to the last external detail, with only one adjustment to make. Manipulating the control pad once more, he looked down at himself and watched as the image of the communicator badge on his chest disappeared. He nodded in satisfaction as he reached for the actual combadge he had taken from the Andorian and affixed it to his own tunic. So far as the Enterprise’s computer and its network of internal sensors were concerned, the presence of the communicator was the same as tracking Lieutenant Diix.
A glance through the window separating the office from the rest of the engineering section confirmed that no one else had taken notice of anything happening in here. Though he had come perilously close to compromising the entire operation, the sigh he released was born more of disappointment than relief.
Unlike many of his peers, Kalsha had no passion for killing. There had been several occasions where he had killed without hesitation, his body and mind reacting in accordance with his training. In each of those instances he had done so because he was forced to conclude that assasination was the only option available to him.
This was one of those occasions.
It had been a risk assuming the form of the human woman, but it would have been even more hazardous had Kalsha chosen to mimic someone who would be recognized as not being part of the crew. Even with a complement as large as the one on this ship, the possibility of someone taking issue with a perceived stranger was too great too ignore.
He had not been comfortable with that choice, either, arguing with his superiors that someone might notice the irregularity of a person being in the main engineering section when they should have been elsewhere. The empty space occupied only seconds before by the Andorian had given credence to his suspicions.
How many more would have to die in order to preserve the secrecy of the operation? That the arrival of the Federation starship had introduced a complication into the carefully crafted plan was an understatement of enormous proportions. Given the Federation’s predilection for interfering at the precise inopportune moment no matter the issue, he wondered if their training academies offered a curriculum to foster such talent.
As Kalsha had told his superiors at the pre-mission briefing, concealing their efforts from the Dokaalan was a simple task, yet doing so in the presence of the Starfleet captain and his crew was something else entirely. If left to their own devices, they would eventually surmise that something more than the Dokaalan’s heroic yet futile efforts was in play here. Already they were sending specialists to inspect the massive planetary reformation operation currently under way on the fifth planet, and what if they should find something?
A moot point now, of course, Kalsha conceded regretfully. There was nothing for him to do now except carry on with his own assignment. Returning his phaser to its holster at his waist, he entered a new command string to the computer terminal, removing the coded override to the security grid. An additional few keystrokes succeeded in wiping away any trace that he had infiltrated the computer’s labyrinthine operating system.
Despite its sophistication, Federation software technology possessed a variety of flaws that were ripe for exploitation by someone possessing the necessary skill. He thought such weaknesses would have been identified and remedied by now, especially given the number of times an enemy had taken advantage of a Starfleet computer system for one reason or another. In fact, Kalsha recalled with a smile, this crew had fallen victim to such attacks more than once.
Hard lessons always take the longest time to learn, he reminded himself.
With his new identity in place, Kalsha could now sit at the chief engineer’s desk and work, secure in the knowledge that so far as the rest of the department was concerned, Diix was simply carrying out his assigned duties. He would need that time and freedom, for even though he had succeeded in infiltrating the ship’s vast computer network to this point, that was child’s play compared to the task that now lay before him.
The information he truly needed, that pertaining to the only member of the crew who was a true threat to their plans from an intellectual as well as a physical sense, was sure to be among the most closely protected data in the system. Penetrating the multiple levels of computer security without his efforts being detected would require every bit of his technical prowess.
Still, Kalsha would find it. There was no choice, not if their plans here were to have any chance at success.
Chapter Twenty-six
“HAVE I MENTIONED how much I hate wearing these things?” Geordi La Forge asked, his voice echoing in the helmet of his environment suit.
To his right, Lieutenant Taurik replied, “Not today, though I
do recall several instances during my first assignment to the Enterprise where you expressed similar displeasure. Shall I recount some of the more colorful descriptions you employed on those occasions?”
La Forge chuckled in spite of his discomfort, the laughter a welcome sound within the confines of his helmet. He had never enjoyed wearing the suit, or the “standard extra-vehicular work garment,” as it was known in Starfleet-speak. It was true that the SEWGs had been modified and improved over the years, and the current model was far superior to the version he had worn once or twice during his first year after graduating from Starfleet Academy.
Come to think of it, he remembered, the ones we used at the Academy were even worse.
The engineer in him reminded himself that the current model of SEWG was the most advanced such garment created by Federation science, ideally suited for working in the harsh vacuum of space as well as the unforgiving environments of countless worlds on which Starfleet personnel might find themselves. If properly used, a SEWG was capable of supporting its wearer for several hours while drifting in open space. According to its technical specifications as well as the Starfleet Survival Guide, the suit was even capable of surviving planetfall in the most extreme of emergency scenarios.
None of which made La Forge feel any better whenever he found himself forced to don one of the suits in the course of carrying out an assignment. He had no plans to test that last claim, anyway, and secretly wondered if the person responsible for writing those specs possessed either a perverse sense of humor or perhaps just a death wish.
“I think I’m okay this time,” he said. Looking over at Faeyahr, the Dokaalan engineer who was currently acting as their guide, he added, “Besides, any bad feelings I might have go away whenever I look at what you have to wear.”
Unlike the clean and sleek environmental suits he and Taurik were wearing, Faeyahr was dressed in a getup cobbled together before their sojourn to the planet’s surface. The suit itself was a bulky affair consisting of a heavily padded undersuit over which the Dokaalan wore a dull gray insulated coverall. His helmet was large and bulbous, a metal shell that housed a wide glass faceplate. La Forge could plainly see the squat tube running from the neck of the helmet to the Dokaalan’s mouth, no doubt providing a source of water or whatever these people consumed to ward off dehydration.