“All your questions will be answered,” she told them. “Now let us do our jobs and rescue as many of you as we can. If you cause us to delay, maybe your loved one is the one we’ll miss. Get out of the way!”
[212] Moving steadily down the jammed corridor, Deanna finally reached the transporter room, where there was now only one security officer on guard. Since the door was open, she could see why—the other two officers were busy trying to move people off the transporter platform and out the door. But where exactly these new arrivals were supposed to go was hard to tell.
She muscled her way into the transporter room, shoving people out of the way with her phaser rifle, until she reached the operator’s console. The tall Andorian was busy working his instruments, bringing groups of eight haggard evacuees in at once. The security officer moved them off the platform just as another wave took their place.
“Chief Rhofistan,” she said, “have you heard from the away team? Riker and Data.”
“No,” he answered, never taking his eyes off his instruments. “I’m due to pick them up exclusively in another two minutes.”
“I think they’re in trouble,” said Troi. “They haven’t answered my hails.”
“Maybe they’re out of their suits for some reason,” said the Andorian. “Their only communications systems are inside the suits.”
“They’re not wearing their combadges?”
“No, that signal wouldn’t get through the shielding in the suits. Excuse me, Commander.” The transporter operator had to ignore her while he brought up another group of dazed survivors. Deanna spent those few precious seconds looking around the crowded room, and she finally found what she was looking for. Discarded in the corner was the third radiation suit, the spare one.
When the transporter chief looked up again, she asked him, “Do you have two spare combadges?”
“Sure.” From a drawer, he fished out two standard combadges and handed them to her. They usually kept a few spares on hand to give to passengers to make it easier to lock onto them with the transporter.
[213] “I’m going to put on the extra radiation suit and go down to the surface,” she told the chief.
He raised a snowy white eyebrow, and his antennae twitched for a moment. “Are you sure that’s advisable?”
“No, but I’m doing it anyway. Set me down exactly where you set Riker and Data down. But do what you can to get all three of us.” Troi hefted the phaser rifle. “I think I’ll take this with me, and my combadge.”
“The combadge won’t do you any good inside that suit,” said the transporter chief. “But I’ll route your communications through. Are you staying to take the readings?”
Deanna swallowed dryly. “Let’s say for the sake of argument, I am.”
“I have to turn off the phase-shifting a split second before I transport you,” said Rhofistan. “I’ll control that from here, but I didn’t want you to be surprised. The suit checks out—you’re good to go.”
Having helped Will into his armor only a couple of hours ago, Deanna remembered fairly well how to get into it. First she stripped off everything but her undergarments; then she cracked open the back and climbed in. Troi was unprepared for the way the gel material molded itself to her body, but the disconcerting sensations soon passed—to be replaced by the strangeness of being encased in the bulky cocoon. Good thing I’m not claustrophobic, she thought. In fact, Troi was reminded of the meditation chambers on Betazoid—hardly bigger than coffins.
One of the security officers helped her close her rear clasps, then he went back to work. “One more group to bring up,” explained the transporter chief, his voice booming in the headgear.
Deanna waited impatiently inside the armor, listening to her own labored breathing and thumping heart. Finally the last group of refugees arrived and stepped numbly off the transporter platform. Troi tried not to think about the ones waiting in line behind them—the ones who would not make it to safety.
[214] As security officers tried to deal with the new arrivals, Troi lumbered onto the platform and situated herself on the pad. She knew time was running out—she could see it in the anxious faces of the security detail and the transporter chief. If she had any sense at all, she wouldn’t be doing this, but she had never had any sense where Will Riker was concerned.
With a wave of her phaser rifle, she ordered, “Energize.”
A moment later, Deanna Troi materialized in the middle of a huge public square, filled with people, trash, and the wreckage of a couple of shuttlecraft. She instantly whirled in every direction, looking for Will and Data, but she couldn’t see them in the mass of people rushing to and fro.
Then she remembered that she had a tricorder, sensors, and all kinds of goodies built into this suit. Of course, she didn’t have any training in using it, but she assumed its computer would take orders.
“Computer,” she said, “locate any radiation suits like this one.”
“Please clarify the request,” answered the computer.
“Activate comlink. Troi to Riker. Troi to Data!” She waited, but her hails met with stony silence. Before she could think of another order to give, her attention was distracted by columns of dark smoke spewing from one of the glittering skyscrapers bordering the square. I need to find some kind of high ground, thought Deanna, so I can see over all these people.
As she lumbered along, wielding her phaser rifle, Troi got a few blank stares, but most of the inhabitants were lost in their own worlds. Unless they were in denial, as a few jovial souls were, they were facing death for the first and last time in their lives. She could feel the fear and desperation—it was as palpable as the dark smoke that hung in the sky.
She jumped when she heard a voice in her headgear. “Chief Rhofistan to Troi.”
“Troi here,” she answered, relieved that the transporter operator was keeping tabs on her.
[215] “I just wanted to let you know that we’ve stopped evacuations, and we’re on Yellow Alert. The captain has given word that we should be ready to pull out any second.”
“But I haven’t found them yet!” she said with alarm.
“You know we can’t stay here,” said the chief. “After it hits the planet, we only have ten seconds before it reaches the ship. I’m under orders to get you after six seconds, even if we can’t find the other team.”
“All right,” rasped Troi, knowing it would do no good to argue with him—he had his orders. Captain Picard had already shown that he was prepared to sacrifice lives to save the Enterprise and all aboard, even if that meant losing his first and second officers.
How could she find them in all this chaos? She suddenly realized that she had the equivalent of a signal device in her hands, and Deanna pointed the phaser rifle toward the sky and sent one brilliant streak after another into the sky. Many of the startled inhabitants shrunk away from the strange white golem who was blasting off a phaser as if it were New Year’s Eve, but she didn’t care about that. She wanted to cause a commotion and attract some attention.
It seemed like forever that she wandered in the square, shooting her phaser, but it was only a couple of minutes. Finally, a figure came bounding toward her across the park, leaping over people’s heads. His leaps were so huge and effortless that he looked like a man jogging on Earth’s moon. Troi stopped firing, knowing it could only be one entity—Data. He wasn’t wearing his radiation suit.
“Counselor Troi,” said the android, bounding to a graceful stop. “I am surprised but gratified to see you.”
“Where is Commander Riker?” she demanded.
“He was injured in that fire.” Data pointed to the black smoke spewing from an elegant skyscraper. “He is conscious now but unable to walk. I believe his leg is broken. The problem is that our radiation suits were also damaged, and we were unable to contact the ship.”
[216] A voice burst into her ears over the comlink in her headgear. “Picard to Troi.”
Deanna held up a finger, motioning Data to wait
. “Troi here, Captain.”
“You’re on the planet surface?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“The wave is moving faster than we anticipated. You have less than two minutes. We can’t seem to contact Riker and Data.”
Troi took a deep breath and looked around the dying city. In this suit, it would take her two minutes to walk across the crowded square to reach Will, and probably another minute to get out of the suit. So she made a difficult decision. “I’m staying on the surface to take readings, but I’ve got combadges for Riker and Data. Beam them up now, but don’t forget me.”
“We won’t, Counselor. Good luck. Picard out.”
She turned to Data, about to explain, but the android was holding out his palm. “My hearing picked up the conversation. You are very brave, Commander.”
“Just get Will to safety,” she said as she handed over the two extra combadges. “How do I work this suit?”
“Say, ‘Computer, phase-shifting on.’ Tricorder operations are automatic.” With that, the android turned and bounded off, leaping twenty meters at a time, sailing over the desultory crowd.
“Computer, phase-shifting on,” ordered Deanna. She held her breath, expecting some change, but nothing felt different inside the suit. Deanna had a moment’s panic that the phase-shifting wasn’t working, and she would be dead with all of these poor, dispirited souls.
“Computer, what is the status?” she asked with a gulp.
“All systems functional, interphase mode activated,” answered the computer. “For a Betazoid, your vital signs are quite elevated, indicating severe stress or illness.”
“Never mind about me; I’m okay.” She had more pressing [217] concerns. Every passing second, more people were staring at her in curiosity and anger, and they were coming closer. Troi lifted her phaser rifle and leveled it at the crowd, thinking that the weapon seemed lighter and more slippery than it had before.
“Hey, you got any more of those suits?” asked one older man, who might have looked distinguished if his shirt weren’t torn and his nose weren’t bloody. “We could use some more suits like that.”
“Yeah!” called a Coridan female. “When are they going to start beaming us up again?” A crowd was starting to gather around the strange, armored figure. They had nothing else to do, thought Troi, but wait for their own deaths and harass her.
“Go ahead and use that phaser on me!” demanded one old, gray-haired Argelian. “I don’t want to live through this thing, if it’s as bad as they say. Shoot me!”
“Kill me!”
“Me, too!”
Although they were menacing her, Deanna’s heart went out to these distraught beings, many of whom were retired Starfleet officers. She wanted to bring them as much comfort as she could, but she was one person, surrounded by hundreds.
In a raspy voice, she spoke, and her amplified voice boomed from the suit. “Are any of you former Starfleet?”
“Yes, me! Me! Here!” Hands shot up all around her, and there was a glimmer of hope in their vacant eyes.
“I have to take tricorder readings,” she said. “That’s why I’m down here in this getup. I need people to do a little crowd control for me—to keep the curious away.”
“But what about saving us?” they demanded. “Aren’t there any more rescues?”
“Starfleet officers,” she said. “Do you remember the oath you took to help others? To do as you were ordered? You can’t worry about yourselves when you have your duty to perform. Your actions will help to save others in the path of this disaster.”
[218] She had shamed them—or at least stunned them—into a few moments of silence and retrospection. The Coridan female suddenly dropped to her knees and began to wail. “It’s coming! We’re all going to die!”
Deanna wasn’t sure what was coming, but the sky over the town square began to darken, shifting from a pale blue to a putrid green. Screams and gasps rent the air, and people began to run, colliding into each other. Complete strangers gripped each other in terrified embrace, and there was a trembling deep in the ground.
She turned to see mirrored skyscrapers, framed by a beautiful aurora, quivering like an optical illusion. The whole city looked like a sidewalk baking in the summer’s heat. Gulping down her fear, Troi gazed upward and saw a searing green curtain envelope the buildings. The mirrored surfaces throbbed, then exploded into clouds of smoke and molten debris.
The pavement heaved under her feet and crumbled to dust, and the people around her shrieked their last, as the unholy flame swept over them. Before Troi’s horrified eyes, their bodies broke down into basic components—blood, organs, bones. Their death throes and anguish were mercifully short. Her stomach lurched; bile shot up her throat as she watched living beings seep into the ground, joining a seething miasma of twitching new life.
Readouts on her faceplate began to scroll at a blinding pace, and Deanna panted in fear. Her mind was convinced that the awful transformation was happening to her, even if her body was still encased in the magical armor.
She finally controlled her fear long enough to gape at the awesome transformations. The urban jungle had become a real jungle, with twisting vines, sky-high trees, and rudimentary forms of animal life writhing in the muck. Troi hoped the built-in tricorder was recording all of this, because she would never remember half the things that happened in a split second.
“Phase-shifting off,” said the computer’s voice, which was eerily [219] calm. As her feet began to smolder and sink in the mire, Deanna screamed. Then she felt the comforting grip of the transporter beam, and a second scream died in her throat.
She staggered off the transporter platform convinced that her suit was on fire, and it was. A team moved in with extinguishers to put out the embers, while strong hands unsnapped the back of her suit and grasped her torso.
Effortlessly, Data pulled her out of the burning suit and deposited her in another pair of strong arms—Will’s. She hugged him desperately, sobbing with relief and pent-up fear. “Imzadi,” he said warmly. “It’s all right—you’re safe.”
It took her a moment to realize that Will was standing on crutches, and Dr. Crusher hovered nearby, ready to aid her, too. “Are we getting out of here?” she asked hoarsely.
“We’re already in warp drive,” answered Chief Rhofistan from the operator’s console. “The tricorder data appear complete. Mission accomplished. Congratulations, Commander Troi.”
She nodded wearily, and Will gave her an extra hug and a proud smile.
The transporter chief added, “I’m patched into the video log from the bridge. Would anybody like to see what’s happening to the planet?”
“No, no!” barked Deanna quickly. “I’ve seen what happened to the planet—I don’t ever want to see that again.”
She shivered and gazed at Will, who conducted her from the transporter room, limping on his crutch. We survived this one, Deanna thought gloomily. At least some of us did.
nineteen
On the edge of the Neutral Zone, four mighty starships rested motionless in space, their curved noses pointed toward one another like a flock of vultures gathered around a carcass. Green-hued and lit stem to stern like floating cities, the Romulan warbirds sparkled more brightly than the stars around them. Tiny support vessels flitted between the massive ships, refueling and exchanging crew, and they looked like remoras tending a school of sharks.
In his quarters, Commander Jagron of the warbird D’Arvuk stood perfectly still while his valet straightened his regal dress uniform, complete with padded shoulders, rich embroidery, and elaborate belts crossing his chest. He couldn’t fathom the reason behind this hastily called gathering of every warbird in the sector, but he wasn’t going to quarrel with the directive. The Praetor himself was due to meet with them—a great honor.
Jagron was young for a Romulan commander, the equivalent of captain; he had only had his command since the Dominion war, when his commander had fallen in battle. The young centurion had picked up
the command staff and had turned the tide against a [221] Breen ship, disabling and capturing it. Of course, all the Breen crew had vaporized themselves, since they never allowed themselves to be captured. Jagron had moved swiftly up the ranks after that, gaining command of this D’deridex-class warbird, but he had ambitions beyond the command of a single vessel.
Despite his relative youth and a family background of low nobility, Jagron looked every centimeter the part of a Romulan commander. He was tall and slim, handsome in a hawklike way, and arrogant to a fault.
“That’s enough fussing,” he said, brushing off his valet’s hands and straightening his own stiff collar. “It’s just a meeting.”
“But with the Praetor, Sir,” said the old valet in hushed tones. “And the Proconsul.”
“Yes,” replied Captain Jagron with a frown. “All this firepower ... for what?”
“You’ll know soon, Commander.”
Still frowning, Jagron strode from his quarters down the hallway to the transporter room, where he was met by his top aides, Centurion Gravonak and Intelligence Officer Petroliv. The tall and stately Petroliv was also his lover, but they had taken considerable pains to hide that fact from the rest of the crew. They always treated each other with cool professionalism.
“My Liege,” said Gravonak, bowing like the toady he was.
“Are we still in the dark about the reason for this gathering?” asked Jagron as he strode into the transporter room.
“Not entirely,” answered Petroliv. “We’re sure it has something to do with the massive fleet movements we’ve been observing in the Federation.”
“Movements away from the Neutral Zone,” added Gravonak, sounding displeased that, unlike his colleague, he had nothing new to report.
When they reached the transporter platform, all three of them climbed aboard. A very nervous transporter operator cleared his [222] throat. “I’m sorry, Commander Jagron, but the protocols call for every commander to bring one aide, no more.”
Centurion Gravonak folded his hands in front of him, as if expecting the intelligence officer to step down. Commander Jagron gazed from the stuffy first officer to his beautiful intelligence officer; he had already made his decision, but he wanted to make it look as if he were deliberating.
STAR TREK: TNG - The Genesis Wave, Book One Page 21
