Star Trek (4 page)

“H
ere we are,” Brag-Ret said calmly, though he had just raced the hovercar at top speed in a heart-stop-ping slalom through the city and slammed it into a parking dock so hard that Carol just
knew
she had thrown her back out. “Let's see how the children at
this
school celebrate Federation Day!”

Carol looked at Corsi, who rolled her eyes. They both knew that it was no accident that their visit to New Mirada happened to coincide with the first annual Federation Day. In fact, Carol would not have been surprised to learn that it was Federation Day every time a Federation official dropped by New Mirada.

Sog-Ret burst from the hovercar and dragged Rennan out after her by the elbow. “Let's go, guys!” she said. “We only have fifteen
riglis
till we have to be back across town again!”

Carol slumped in her seat and watched miserably as Brag-Ret hustled Corsi out onto the moving walkway. She felt like a child herself, being hurried between tourist attractions on vacation by overzealous parents.

Truly, Brag-Ret and Sog-Ret brought new meaning to the term “overscheduling.” In the two hours since beaming to the surface, Carol, Corsi, and Rennan had been propelled on a nonstop tour of the capital city of New Mirada, a capital that the Miradorn had renamed “Federation City” since the end of the Dominion War.

Already, in just two hours, the away team had visited three grade schools, two retirement homes, two hospitals, and a shopping complex, never spending more than fifteen minutes at each one. Though no one but Brag-Ret and Sog-Ret had access to the actual schedule, Carol got the impression, from hints that her guides had dropped, that the rest of the day would be at least as jam-packed as the first half had been.

And about as helpful, no doubt. Carol had seen quite enough staged imaging opportunities for one planet, thank you very much. The only thing she learned from all the pep rallies and key-to-the-city/student artwork/home-baked pastry presentations was that the New Mirada chamber of commerce was trying
way
too hard to make an impression.

Plus which, all the high-speed hoopla made her wonder what exactly the Miradorn
didn't
want her to see. The thicker they laid it on, the more suspicious she became.

Case in point. “Oh my!” said Brag-Ret, gasping as he helped her from the hovercar. “The sunlight serves to enhance your beauty even
more
. I would not have thought it
possible,
but your loveliness grows with each passing
moment
.”

Carol thanked him dutifully as the moving walkway carried her into the building. Yes, she realized, it
was
possible to hear how beautiful she was too many times in a single day. She resolved never to share this intelligence with Vance Hawkins.

As the ruckus of excited Miradorn children reached her from the open double doors up ahead, Carol made a decision. The way things were going would have been absolutely fine if she were on a simple goodwill tour, but her assignment was to dig in and assess the true state of mind of the Miradorn people vis-à-vis the Federation. She wouldn't be doing that if she kept glad-handing and small-talking for the rest of her visit.

Clearly, it was time to revise the itinerary.

When the walkway had deposited her in the noisy auditorium, Carol strolled past Sog-Ret to stand alongside Corsi.

“Hey, Domenica,” said Carol, whispering in Corsi's ear. “I've got an idea.”

“Me, too,” said Corsi, glaring at the mob of young Miradorn children fidgeting and jabbering in the rows of seats before them. “Does yours involve settling these kids down with a wide beam phaser set on stun?”

“My idea is more along the lines of making a run for it,” said Carol.

“That works, too,” said Corsi.

Rennan, who was standing on the other side of Corsi, leaned in with a grin. “Count me in.”

Carol sighed. “Why do we bother whispering with a Betazoid around?”

“Who said we were going to invite you?” Corsi said sternly.

“You need my superior fighting skills,” said Rennan.

Corsi snorted. “I dare you to read my mind right this minute.”

Rennan stared at her for a moment, then grimaced. “Now
that's
harassment, Lieutenant Commander.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” said Corsi, and then she turned back to Carol. “So when do you want to run for it?”

“Good question.” Carol looked around the auditorium. She saw Brag-Ret and Sog-Ret standing near the door, talking to a woman in a businesslike navy blue outfit who looked like she might be a school official. “I say there's no time like the present.”

“So how do we make this happen?” said Rennan.

“Leave that to me,” Corsi said with a nod. “Stay here until you get the signal. Then make a run for the hovercar.”

With that, Corsi walked over to the school official and asked a question. Smiling, the official answered, after which Corsi nodded and marched out the door.

“I wonder what she said?” said Carol.

“She asked for directions to the ladies' room,” Rennan said with a smirk.

Three minutes later, just as the school official had introduced Carol and Rennan, and the children were stomping their feet in applause, a piercing whine blasted through the auditorium.

All at once, every child in the room got up and marched in an orderly fashion for the exits positioned in the middle of each of the four walls. The adults, including the school official, observed the evacuation and shouted occasional instructions to the children.

Rennan elbowed Carol's arm. “I'd say this must be our signal.”

“Good guess,” said Carol, and then the two of them darted out the nearest door. They made it out just ahead of a double-file formation of Miradorn children.

Brag-Ret and Sog-Ret were not so lucky. Though not far behind Carol and Rennan, the bombastic, bearded twins were stuck in the auditorium, hemmed in by columns of children.

Once out in the hallway, Carol and Rennan broke into a run. When they got to the dock, they found Corsi behind the wheel of the hovercar, revving the engine.

“Nice work,” said Carol as she jumped in beside Corsi. “You really know how to stage a diversion.”

“Nothing like a good, old-fashioned fire drill,” said Corsi, whipping the hovercar away from the dock the second Rennan's posterior hit the backseat. “Provided you can find the right switch to pull.”

J
ust as Soloman leaped away from the altar in the shrine of Ho'nig, sixteen beams of destructive white energy punched down from the circle of sixteen columns and pulverized the altar into a swirling cloud of dust.

Vance raced toward Soloman, dodging a flying grenade and a shower of sparks along the way, only to be stopped in midstep by an arm that broke off a bejeweled statue and slammed into his chest. Vance went over backward, collapsing to the stone floor with a jarring impact. It was just as well, as it turned out. As he lay there, looking up, a sheet of bright green energy slid across the space above him, crackling as it lopped off the backs of pews and the top half of a statue of a pious-looking Brikar.

Just before the statue's head and shoulders dropped, Vance threw off the stone arm that had knocked him down and hastily rolled out of the way. A heartbeat later, the top of the Brikar crashed onto the spot that Vance's lower body had just occupied, breaking into chunks of rubble and sending up a puff of dust.

It was his ninth or tenth superclose call in the five minutes since the Dominion failsafe had triggered every remaining booby trap in the shrine at once. At the rate he was going, Vance thought it was pretty unlikely that he would walk out of the shrine alive, especially given the fact that he had used up all of his nine lives on S.C.E. missions long ago.

Somewhere in the middle of the mayhem, Commander Gomez was shouting orders, trying to coordinate the team's efforts to deflect and deactivate the multiple threats. So far, Vance had been having enough trouble just dodging deathtraps to be much help disabling them.

“Soloman?” said Gomez. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, Commander,” Soloman said from not far away, “but the altar access terminal has been destroyed.”

“Then go help Pattie at the west wall terminal,” said Gomez. “See if you can implement a flash-purge from there.”

“On my way, Commander,” said Soloman.

“And be careful!” said Gomez.

“Understood,” said Soloman. Watching from the floor, Vance could see the dim outline of the Bynar hurrying past through the drifting clouds of smoke.

Vance sat up and smacked the combadge on his chest. “Lauoc!” he said. “Report!”

“So far, so bad,”
Lauoc said over the combadge, shouting over the deafening whines of nearby weapons fire.
“Kim and T'Mandra are pinned down. I made it to an access panel, but this morph tech is giving me the granddaddy of all headaches. Every time I think I've disabled something, the morphic system reconfigures to work around what I did.”

“What's your location?” said Vance, cautiously getting to his feet.

“I'm at an access point in the back wall,”
said Lauoc,
“trying to shut down a heat-seeking missile launcher…no, wait. It's reconfiguring again.”
As noisy as the place was, Lauoc's disgusted curse came in loud and clear over the combadge.
“Now it's a quantum bomb set to go off in…
three
minutes. It's big enough to bring down the shrine and the entire city sector around it.”

Vance was moving before Lauoc's last word, charging toward the back wall of the shrine. As he ran, he heard projectiles whistling and the beams of energy weapons wailing around him, but he did not slow down or look around. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted something big swinging toward him, and he kicked up his pace enough to get out of the way just in time.

A second later, he heard a woman scream behind him, and he whipped around. By the light of an overhead explosion, Vance saw a white-haired woman pinned to the wall between the prongs of what looked like the head of a giant pitchfork. From a distance, Vance could not tell if the prongs had pierced the woman's body.

Even as the countdown in his head ticked away the seconds until the quantum bomb would go off, Vance ran toward the woman instead of Lauoc. As he got closer, the first thing he noticed was that one of the prongs had indeed drawn blood from the woman's side.

The second thing he noticed was that the woman was a Miradorn. The pearlescent skin and sharp peak of hair drawn all the way down to a spot between her eyebrows were dead giveaways.

Vance charged up to the woman and immediately grabbed hold of the fork. He pulled back on it with all his strength, but it would not budge.

The woman gasped in pain, and her eyes shot wide open. For the first time, Vance got a clear look at them.

Even in the midst of the crisis, he was struck by how strange and beautiful they were. Except for the irises, the eyes were black, flecked with gold glitter; the irises themselves were glowing white rings suspended in the darkness.

“Please hurry,” said the woman, clamping her eyes shut against the pain.

“Done and done,” said Vance, bracing a foot against the wall and giving the fork another yank. This time, it came free, and he tossed it aside.

“Gotta go,” he said, his mental countdown swiftly approaching zero.

Gasping, the woman followed him. “My name is Em-Lin,” she said. “I think I can help.”

“P
lease
let me take a look,” Em-Lin said a second time, louder and more firmly than the first. “Unless either of you has a
better
idea right now.” Ever since she had followed Vance to the access panel for the quantum bomb system, he and Lauoc had blocked her view of the controls.

Now that Em-Lin had gotten their attention, Vance and Lauoc looked at her, then at each other, then back at her. Em-Lin saw naked and abundant skepticism in their eyes, but that was okay. She did not much care what the Starfleeters' opinions of her might be, as long as she was confident that she could do the job.

Lauoc was the first to step aside. “We have less than a minute before the quantum bomb goes off,” he said, raising his voice over the latest round of weapons fire.

“It's a morphic system,” said Vance. When he jabbed a finger into the circuitry, glowing wires slithered away from his touch and reformed a connection several centimeters beyond his fingertip. “Shape-shifting technology.”

Em-Lin nodded and pushed forward to the open access panel in the wall. By her reckoning, the bomb would detonate in thirty-five seconds.

There was no time for explanations, and they were unnecessary anyway. Em-Lin knew all about morphic circuitry.

The Dominion had taught her well.

Gritting her teeth against the latest surge of pain from the wound in her side, Em-Lin thrust her hand into the hip pocket of her burgundy coveralls and found the tool that she needed. It felt like a metal rod at first, but came to life when she touched it. As her fingers wrapped around it, the tool wrapped around her fingers, twisting and twining like a fast-growing vine.

She drew the device from her pocket and focused her thoughts on it, reaching out with her mind just as she had always done with Or-Lin. She felt the tool waiting, its tiny, fuzzy brain vibrating softly with the simple question that was the sum total of its desires:

What do you want me to do?

Em-Lin sent back the answer:
Turn off the bomb.

As soon as she thought it, Em-Lin felt the tool reshaping itself for the task ahead, growing dozens of tiny, silver tentacles around its tip. When she raised it toward the open access panel, the tentacles fluttered excitedly, reaching straight out for the maze of flashing circuitry inside the opening. The tool itself grabbed hold and pulled itself the rest of the way into the gap.

“What
is
that thing?” said Vance.

Em-Lin silenced him with a wave and continued to focus her mind on the tool. At this point, the slightest distraction could mean complete disaster.

Inside the access point, the tool's tentacles grew and branched and flowed along circuitry pathways like liquid. Em-Lin felt the circuitry reacting, realigning itself to escape the intruder and preserve functionality…but the tool sensed every change and shifted the shape and qualities of its extrusions to compensate.

In the end, the tool was smarter and more agile than the bomb system. The bomb's control program tried one last surprise maneuver, attempting to use the tool itself to trigger detonation, but the tool caught on fast and shuffled the corrupted code into final deactivation commands.

With fewer than ten seconds left until the scheduled explosion, the quantum bomb system went permanently offline.

“All clear,” said Em-Lin.

Vance kept looking from her to the tool and back.

“What I want to know, is where can I get one of those?”

“Me, too,” Lauoc said.

“Pretty sure we're going to want to buy 'em in bulk,” said Vance.

Em-Lin's smile turned into a grimace as the pain in her side flared up. She sagged, releasing her grip on the tool, and Vance automatically wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

“You need to see our doctor,” said Vance.

Em-Lin shook her head and reached for the shape-shifting tool.
Deactivate all booby traps,
she told it with her mind as soon as her hand made contact and the gelatinous substance of the device wrapped around it.

The answer flashed right back to her:
Cannot
. The tool showed her why with a series of images flickering over the link.

Disengage,
Em-Lin told the tool, and then, though she didn't think it would understand, she sent it this, too:
Thank you
. Always be nice to your tools, her father had taught her.

“We can't shut down the other booby traps from here,” said Em-Lin. “After activation, each trap operates independent of the overarching system. We'll have to work on one device at a time.”

“If by working on the devices, you mean getting medical treatment for your injury,” said Vance, “then great.”

Em-Lin tried not to let Vance or Lauoc see her wince at the pain in her side, but she did not think that she hid it very well. “Do we have to get across the shrine anyway?” she said. “To get to the medical care, I mean.”

“We do,” said Lauoc.

“Then if we're already going in that direction,” said Em-Lin, “it won't matter if we make some stops along the way, will it?”

Something exploded nearby, and Vance shook his head. “All right,” he said. “But we're running you right out of here if you start getting worse.”

“Fair enough,” said Em-Lin. “Where's the next terminal?”

It was then, just as she slowly started forward, supported on either side by Vance and Lauoc, that Em-Lin heard Or-Lin's giggling voice in her ear once more.

I have an idea,
said Or-Lin.
Why not set off the next bomb? Why not come join me, and bring the Starfleeties with you?

Em-Lin did not dignify Or-Lin's questions with an answer. She was not about to get into an argument with a
dugo tenya,
and she certainly had no intention of doing its bidding.

Even though it wasn't like she didn't have any Starfleet blood on her hands already.