Star Trek (8 page)

N
ow, now,
said Or-Lin as she bent down over Em-Lin.
Try to calm down, sister. It isn't the end of the world, is it?

Em-Lin shivered, staring up wide-eyed from the floor of the Dominion chamber. Somehow, Or-Lin had become more real, manifesting for the first time since her death so that Em-Lin could perceive her with multiple senses at once. Em-Lin could hear her, see her, and feel her touch all at the same time, as if she were still alive right there in the room with her.

This, to Em-Lin, was not a welcome change. Her resurrected sister had the same twisted edge that she had been flaunting since the explosion that had killed her.

Death isn't what it used to be, apparently. Especially down here.
Or-Lin smiled as she looked around the chamber, her gaze lingering on the giant tank at its heart.
Ironic, isn't it? If that bomb hadn't blown me up, no one would have found this place and come down here. You wouldn't have brought me here, and I wouldn't have gotten such a big post-life recharge.

“Em-Lin?” Another voice broke through then, a voice that Em-Lin recognized as Vance's. “Can you hear me?” She tried to focus on that voice and block out Or-Lin's, but she felt sluggish and had trouble tuning out her sister.

“Go away!” said Em-Lin, but Or-Lin continued to smile down at her. For his part, Vance looked uncertain as to whether or not he was the one Em-Lin was telling to leave.

Slowly, Or-Lin shook her head.
I'm not going anywhere, big sister. Thanks to the Vorta's device and the little Bynar, I'll be with you all the time now.

“What?” Em-Lin's heart raced at the thought of the
dugo tenya
becoming a permanent part of her life. She had loved her sister when she was alive—except at the end, when Or-Lin had threatened her with Division—and she did not wish her ill now that she was dead, but she knew that going through life with a
dugo tenya
would be enough to drive her out of her mind.

The little Bynar hasn't mastered changeling programming yet,
said Or-Lin.
He accidentally ramped up the system's output far ahead of schedule. The good news is, the power boost made me more real than ever. The bad news is, the system is out of control and will pretty much wipe out the Miradorn species.

“Em-Lin?” said Vance, his voice sounding very far away. “Tell me what's wrong.”

I want us to get off on the right foot for our new arrangement,
said Or-Lin.
That's why I'm going to help you fix the Founder's device and save the day.

“I don't want to fix it,” said Em-Lin.

Why not? After all, you helped build it in the first place.

“I've given them a mild sedative,” said Lense, withdrawing the hypo from Boz-Nu's arm. “It's limiting the expression of the seizures but not stopping them.”

“What's causing them?” said Gomez, staring down at Boz-Nu and Yet-Nu on the floor. The two men squirmed and groaned fitfully, grimacing in agony as they clawed at their skulls.

“I'm still working it out,” said Lense. “The seizures originate in the overlobe, the part of the Miradorn cerebral cortex that governs the extrasensory linkage between twins. In both men, neural activity in the overlobe has exceeded all normal levels and become highly erratic. Em-Lin's different, though.”

Gomez looked across the chamber to where Em-Lin sat back against a wall, talking to thin air while Vance tried to press a bottle of water into her hand.

“In what way?” said Gomez.

“A different region of her brain has been hyper-stimulated,” said Lense. “A lobe associated primarily with functions related to REM sleep and dreaming.”

“What's the prognosis?” said Gomez.

“With Em-Lin, I have no idea,” said Lense. “The men, I believe, will eventually suffer permanent damage from the seizures. Perhaps fatal damage.” Lense let out a long breath.

“Are you okay, Elizabeth?” Gomez asked. The doctor looked a bit ashen and very fatigued.

“I'm fine. Just need to sit down for a second.”

Gomez didn't buy that in the least, but there were more pressing issues. While Lense found a chair, Gomez walked to the control panels at the base of the tank and asked Soloman and Fabian, “Any idea how widespread the effect might be?”

“We're still trying to figure out what the effect
is,
” Fabian said without turning from his work.

Better safe than sorry,
thought Gomez. She touched the combadge on her chest. “Saf-Lig?” she said, calling the Miradorn security officer whose team was protecting the shrine above. She planned to instruct him to evacuate the entire local quadrant of the surrounding city in case the effect spread outward from the Dominion facility.

That was what she would have told him to do if he had answered her call, at least. She tried to reach him a total of five times before she gave up on him; she tried his twin brother, Gre-Lig, but got the same result.

It was then that she knew, even before she contacted the
da Vinci,
that the Miradorn seizure effect had done more damage than had been immediately apparent from the isolation of the Dominion facility.

T
he street outside Mother Wu's house was filled with screaming Miradorn of all ages. Flames and smoke billowed out of the windows of nearby homes. In the distance, Carol saw a hovercar shoot from the sky at a steep angle and plunge toward the ground, its crash landing marked by an explosion.

“It's usually a quieter neighborhood than this,” said Mother Wu. “I've never seen it like this before.”

Carol nodded. She had a feeling of terrible awe at the chaos around her, amplified by the awareness that the same scene was taking place all over the planet of New Mirada at the same moment.

It was overwhelming. Carol was filled with the primal urge to run, to get away before whatever was destroying these people turned on her, too. At the same time, she felt torn in a thousand different directions because there were too many suffering people just in that one small area and she could never hope to help them all.

When the familiar shimmer of the transporter effect appeared in front of her, Carol immediately felt relieved. Four of her shipmates materialized, bringing with them the hope that even this apocalyptic disaster could somehow be averted.

Without waiting for introductions, Mother Wu pushed in front of Carol and eyed the new arrivals. “Which one's the doctor?” she said. “You?” She pointed the barrel of the disruptor rifle at the chest of Ellec Krotine, one of the two security guards who accompanied the medical team.

“Uh, no,” the Boslic woman said quickly.

“Our doctor's on Zasharu,” said Carol. Stepping forward, she gestured at the human woman standing beside Krotine. “Nurse Wetzel will do what she can for your boys.”

Mother Wu looked disgusted, but she lowered the rifle. Carol had lived up to her end of the deal, summoning medical assistance from the
da Vinci
in return for being freed from her bonds in the basement.

Now it was time for Mother Wu to complete the bargain. “Why don't you show Nurse Wetzel where your sons are?” said Carol. “And while you're at it, unshackle my friends.”

“All right, all right,” said Mother Wu, heading back into the house. “Follow me.” Sandy Wetzel fell into step behind her.

“How about that gun?” Carol shouted after them. Mother Wu blew out her breath and stomped back to Carol. “I expect it back,” she said, tossing the rifle into Carol's arms.

It was the last provision of the deal between them. “Thanks,” said Carol. “And good luck with your boys.” Carol thought that was a pretty generous thing to say, considering the “boys” had kidnapped her and her team and threatened to kill them, but Mother Wu seemed unimpressed and marched away without another word.

“Such a sweet woman,” said Krotine dryly. “Why isn't she screaming her lungs out and rolling around on the ground like all the other Miradorn out here?”

“I don't know,” said Carol. “Maybe because she doesn't have a twin? I haven't seen one, anyway. It's just a guess. Have the engineers been able to figure out what's causing this?” She spread her arms wide to encompass the screaming madness all around them.

The other security guard, Madeleine Robins, said, “Whatever's happening, it's hit Zasharu, too. Apparently there's some tech device in the old Dominion facility there. Tev's taking a team down there to try to figure it out.”

Just then, a little girl with short brown hair hurled herself to the street in front of Carol, screaming and twitching. Not far away, her twin lay silent and still on the pavement, eyes and mouth gaping at the sky.

Dantas Falcão, the medical technician who had beamed down with the team at Carol's request, ran to aid the twin. Carol was right behind her.

“Y
ou want to know what's causing the seizures?” said Fabian. “Everything.”

“Everything?” said Gomez.

“Everything,” said Fabian. “In a manner of speaking.”

“But not all at once,” said Soloman.

Gomez stood behind the two, watching as they worked at the control panels around the base of the tank. “Consider my curiosity aroused,” she said. “Tell me more.”

“This device is a transmitter,” said Fabian, thumping the transparent tank with his fist. “It's broadcasting the signal that's affecting the Miradorn's overlobes and triggering the seizures.”

“We experienced difficulty isolating the signal,” said Soloman, “because it is a morphic signal. A
changeling
signal.”

“The
type
of transmission is constantly changing,” said Fabian. “It might start out as a subspace radio wave, then switch to an X-ray or ultraviolet light or electromagnetic radiation or a stream of tachyons or chronitons. While in transit, the signal cycles randomly through a multitude of types and frequencies of transmittable waves or particles.”

“Wow,” said Gomez. “How is that even possible?”

Fabian shrugged. “We haven't figured that out yet.”

“But we know what happens when the signal is received by a Miradorn brain,” Lense said from the floor, where she was treating Yet-Nu and Boz-Nu. “The signal turns the Miradorn's own linking abilities against them. The overlobe, which is already capable of sending and receiving neuroelectric signals, opens the floodgates. The overlobe goes into overdrive. It fires off bursts of neuroelectric energy in all directions like a porcupine firing quills, only continuously. It blasts other Miradorn minds and opens itself up to identical blasts from those other minds in turn.”

Gomez thought for a moment. “But Miradorn should only be able to link with their twins, right?”

“Yes,” said Lense. “This device effectively links much larger groups, though it does so in a destructive fashion.”

“Larger,” said Gomez. “How large? Do we know the range yet?”

Pattie spoke up from a control board on the opposite side of the tank. She was standing on her hind legs, manipulating controls with the pincers on her forelegs. “The entire moon,” she said. “The signal strength from this transmitter is enough to reach all Miradorn on Zasharu.”

“But not beyond?” said Gomez.

“Not beyond,” said Pattie.

“But the same phenomenon is blanketing New Mirada,” said Gomez. “Therefore…” She touched her combadge. “Gomez to Tev.”

“Tev here.”
The huge, hysterical crowd in the background sounded even more hysterical than before.

“There's a second transmitter,” said Gomez. “It must be on the surface of New Mirada.”

“I suspected as much,”
said Tev.

Of course you did,
thought Gomez. “Contact the
da Vinci
and initiate a search from orbit,” she said.

“Leave it to those crazy Founders,” said Fabian. “They set up
twin
transmitters to fry the minds of the Miradorn people, who are predominantly
twins
.”

“For those who like a little irony with the suffering they inflict,” said Gomez.

“You just described the Founders, all right,” said Fabian.

“We'll continue to work with the Zasharu device,” Gomez told Tev, “and we'll notify you of our progress.”

“We will do the same,”
said Tev, his voice nearly drowned out by the commotion surrounding him.
“In the meantime, Corsi, Abramowitz, Wetzel, and Falcão are mounting a triage effort.”

“Is a security detail with them beyond Domenica?” Gomez asked.

“Affirmative. Robins, Konya, and Krotine are there as well. Bartholomew and I will attempt to do something useful.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Gomez snapped.

“Simply that medical efforts are fruitless as long as we are unable to halt the established progression of the attacks.”

“Then we'd best stop talking and start—”

“Commander!” said Dr. Lense.

Gomez spun toward Lense. The first thing Gomez noticed was that Boz-Nu was convulsing and wailing on the floor, but Yet-Nu was not.

“Yet-Nu is dead,” said Lense. “I don't think his brother will be far behind.”