Seekers: Second Nature

by David Mack

  “Good, get it done. Hesh, I—” She looked around, wondering where the Arkenite had gone. She found him crouched in a dark nook at the far end of the chamber. “Hesh, what’re—”

  A baby’s piercing cry split the air and reverberated through the caves.

  Hesh stood, cradling the swaddled infant. “She was just lying here.”

  “That’s Nimur’s daughter,” Ysan said. “Her name is Tahna. Nimur took her.”

  Dastin looked unhappy to see the child. “And now she’s abandoned her.”

  Ysan summoned a canine-masked Warden with a look. “Matulo, take the child back to the village. Give her back to her Guardians, Chimi and Tayno.” The Warden gently took the whimpering baby from Hesh and hurried her out of the ad hoc slaughterhouse. As they escaped to the sunlit world outside the cave and the baby’s cries receded, the priestess looked down the dark path that lay ahead. “I doubt the last Klingon is still alive. If he is, he won’t be for long.” She directed an almost apologetic look at Theriault. “Nimur is not your responsibility; she’s ours. If you and your friends wish to leave us now, we will ­understand.”

  Her invitation to bail out drew hopeful looks from the rest of the landing party. It fell to Theriault to be the bearer of bad tidings. “Not until we find the last Klingon. As long as there’s a chance he’s alive and can answer questions, we have to try to find him.”

  “As you wish.”

  Theriault stole a look at Tan Bao’s improvised adjustments to a hypospray. “How’s it coming? Think you’ll get a wide enough dispersal to make it useful?”

  “Let’s see.” Tan Bao pointed the hypospray down the passage and squeezed off a quick pump of the chemofluorescent spray. The short hiss was louder than Theriault would have liked, but it was less likely to betray them from a distance than naked light sources were. Seconds later, a trail of blood spatter extending almost fifteen meters ahead of Tan Bao glowed neon green. “It helps that the air in these caves flows from top to bottom. Means we can spray with the current.”

  Dastin surveyed the results. “Outstanding. Let’s go, before it fades.” He followed the blood trail, and Tan Bao walked beside him.

  Theriault signaled Hesh to follow the two men, and then she looked back at Ysan. “Stay close. If we find your friend, we’d rather not face her alone.”

  “We understand.” Ysan motioned her Wardens to follow the Starfleet team. “If we did not have to ensure her Cleansing, we would rather not face her, either.”

  Everyone tried their best to be stealthy as the group descended into the caves, but it was impossible for eleven people treading on gritty stone and patches of loose rock to be silent. If our survival hinges on setting an ambush, Theriault realized, we’re all as good as dead.

  Then came manic, taunting cries that echoed and reechoed through the caves; the sound seemed to come from all directions at once. It was a woman’s voice, but Theriault couldn’t discern words. Just whooping shrieks and banshee moans. The deeper they plumbed, the louder the sounds became—the only indication that they were getting closer.

  Dastin halted the group with a raised hand. Then he pointed at something on the ground. Hesh picked it up. It was a Klingon disruptor pistol, standard military issue—but it was barely recognizable. It had been mangled and smashed, as if twisted and crushed in the gears of a great and merciless machine. The science officer switched the broken weapon to his off hand and then rubbed together the fingertips of his dominant hand. He looked back at Theriault. “Blood.”

  “Okay. We know the last Klingon survivor made it this far. He might be nearby. Stay sharp and—” Movement on the edge of her vision turned her head.

  Nimur was behind them.

  “Hello, Ysan.”

  The fugitive young woman was aglow with strange energies. Her eyes radiated light, as if a bonfire raged behind them. Tiny ribbons of electricity danced between her fingers and crept up her arms. Most alarming of all was her maniacal smile; there was no mirth in it—only malice.

  Ysan and her Wardens formed a skirmish line between Nimur and the landing party. The priestess stepped in front of her people, clearly trying to take charge. “Nimur, this has to stop.”

  “Came to take me back to the fire, did you?” With a birdlike tilt of her head, she peeked past the Wardens at the landing party. “And you brought new friends for me to play with.”

  “Leave them out of this, Nimur.”

  “But you’ve already brought them into it. Or, should I say, they brought you. Because from where I was standing, it seems clear they were leading and you were following.” Nimur regarded the landing party with a malevolent gleam. “I think that makes them fair game.”

  The Wardens raised their lances to fire. Then they flew backward, as if swatted away by an angry god—all without a word or even the slightest movement from Nimur.

  Ysan drew a long, curved dagger from beneath her robe and lunged at Nimur.

  Nimur clenched a fist. Ysan convulsed as she rose several centimeters off the ground. The sickly cracking of her bones was mixed with the wet sound of her body being crushed to a pulp. The dagger fell from Ysan’s twitching hand.

  Seta the disciple ran toward the landing party. She made it three steps before an unseen force slammed her against one wall of the tunnel and then the other. Bloodied and bruised, the young teen collapsed unconscious to the ground.

  Theriault raised her phaser. “Heavy stun! Aim for center mass!” Behind her, Dastin aimed his weapon half a second faster than Tan Bao and Hesh.

  As Nimur let the misshapen husk of Ysan’s body fall in a heap, the wounded Wardens struggled to get up. A few of them started to aim their lances once more at Nimur.

  All the Wardens’ heads twisted one-hundred-eighty degrees in a fraction of a second. The breaking of their necks sounded like old-fashioned firecrackers.

  Then there was nothing between Theriault and the ­demonic force once known as Nimur.

  “Fire!”

  Four blue phaser beams screamed through the darkness and slammed into Nimur. Their combined force launched her backward several meters and knocked her onto her back. For a moment, the crackling electricity on Nimur’s hands ceased, and the fire in her eyes dimmed. Then her eyes flared white and a brutal, invisible blunt force struck Theriault.

  She and the rest of the landing party landed in a tangle of limbs, all of them stunned and groaning in pain. She blinked to clear the spots from her purpled vision and staggered to her feet. With her phaser clutched in her outstretched, unsteady arm, she looked for any sign of Nimur.

  The fugitive was gone.

  Behind her, Dastin rubbed the back of his head. “Is it over?”

  Theriault holstered her phaser. “I’ve got a bad feeling this is just getting started.”

  • • •

  Oblivion was a comfort; the waking life promised nothing beyond suffering and grief. Loath as Seta was to embrace the light, she knew she had no choice. Its pull was irresistible.

  Pain was the disciple’s first taste of consciousness. A dull ache filled her skull, and the torn flesh on the side of her face burned at the kiss of a breeze. It hurt to force her eyes open; a bright light made her squint.

  “Good pupil response,” said one of the strangers, a male with black hair. “Minor concussion, scrapes and bruises. She’ll be okay.”

  Seta held up a hand to block the light. “What are you doing?”

  “Tending your wounds. Are you feeling any pain? In your head, maybe?”

  “Some.”

  “I can make it go away, if you’ll let me. Won’t hurt a bit, I promise.” She nodded her consent, and he set to work. He used odd tools that made sounds like music, and he touched one to her throat. It stung for the briefest moment, and then she felt a blissful release from her pain. It was like drinking the milk of the ulora root, but it didn’t make her drowsy. Anot
her sing-song tool eased the pain of the wound on her face. When she touched it, her skin was whole again.

  The female stranger with hair the color of sunset kneeled in front of her. “Seta? Do you remember our names?”

  “You are Vanessa. The leader.”

  “That’s right, Vanessa Theriault. The man helping you is Nguyen Tan Bao.” She pointed at the two men behind her, the one with spots, and the one with the funny three-bump head. “Do you remember the names of my scout and my scientist?”

  “You call them Dastin and Hesh.”

  “That’s right. Faro Dastin and Sengar Hesh.” The leader woman patted Tan Bao’s shoulder. “Sounds like her memory’s good. Any subdural bleeding?”

  “None that I can detect.” Tan Bao put away his musical tools. “She’s good to go.” He got up and stepped back to let Theriault talk privately with Seta.

  “We need your help, Seta.”

  “I can’t.” Seta wished she were anywhere else. That she had never come here. She tried to look away from Theriault, but in one direction lay the twisted corpses of the Wardens; in the other was the mangled body of Ysan. Terror and grief, fury and sadness all collided inside her heart and churned up heaving sobs. She choked them back, fought to deny the terrible memories that she now carried. Tears rolled from her eyes as her sorrow consumed her.

  Theriault brushed the tears from Seta’s cheek. “I know this is an awful time for you, that you’ve lost people you care about, in ways too horrible to remember. But you need to find some way to keep going, Seta. Because we need you. More important, your people need you.”

  “What can I do for them? For anyone? I’m just a disciple.”

  “Not anymore. Ysan’s dead, Seta. That means you’re the priestess now.”

  She fought the notion with wild shakes of her head and squeezed-shut eyes. “No, I can’t be. I’ve only had half the teaching. There are so many mysteries Ysan never showed me.”

  “I don’t know how, Seta, but you need to teach yourself now. Because until you do, you can’t stop Nimur—and neither can we. We’ll help you any way we can, but you need to let us.”

  “Why do you care about stopping Nimur?”

  “Because I think the Klingons know what she’s changing into, and they want to study it. Maybe to use it on themselves, or turn it against others. I don’t really know what their game is. What I do know is that powers like Nimur’s are too dangerous to let run wild—here or anywhere else. It sounds like the Shepherds your people worship knew something about this, so if we’re going to find answers, I think that’s where we ought to look first.”

  The stranger’s words made sense. They were the only thing that did right now.

  Seta felt hollow and alone as she palmed the last of her tears from her cheeks. This is how it must be. This is how I must live. She made herself stand and walked to Ysan’s desecrated body. The former priestess’s eyes were still open, their lifeless gaze turned toward a sky obscured by endless depths of stone. Seta gently coaxed Ysan’s eyelids shut, and then she removed her teacher’s ceremonial robe of feathers with tender care. The once beautiful garment was now caked with dust and blood. Seta draped it over herself. Then she untied the scabbard from Ysan’s thigh, picked up her fallen dagger, and sheathed it.

  Garbed in the robe of feathers, bearing the sacred blade, Seta realized she truly was the new priestess of the people. In her imagination, this was to have been a moment of pride. Instead, it filled her with nothing but dread and regret.

  The people need me to be strong. My pain no longer matters. I must think of them.

  “I will take you to the wordstone of the Shepherds. It is hidden in a secret alcove, beyond the deepest chamber in the labyrinth. There, the history of the Tomol is written. If answers are what you seek, that is where you will find them.”

  13

  Tormog’s back was pressed to the cave wall. He had heard footsteps behind him and presumed the alien woman had found him, despite all his efforts at stealth. How had she tracked him? All he could think of was his blood trail, but that should have made no difference in the darkness. Could a nose as small and delicate as hers be that sensitive? Could her eyes be that keen?

  Peeking through the sliver-thin crevasse into the tunnel he had left, he saw flecks of his blood glowing green. He squinted, thinking he might be hallucinating, but the trail’s radiance only increased. Primitive instincts filled him with waves of paranoia and a powerful urge to lash out in violence. He called upon his scientific training to quash his animal nature and reason out an explanation for what he was seeing.

  Is my blood reacting to particles in the air? My earlier scans didn’t detect anything that should fluoresce in contact with blood. Could it be something in the stone of these caves? Maybe, but I can’t get a clear scan of anything down here because of the mineral compounds in the rock, so there’s no way to know for sure. Is it something the alien woman is doing? That doesn’t seem likely—but then, neither did Commander Tobar’s head flying off his neck for no visible reason.

  Then the explanation walked past him, single file, in olive-green jumpsuits.

  He knew they were Federation Starfleet personnel by the patches on the shoulders of their uniforms. Two were human, one was a humanoid with curious spots on the side of his face, and the fourth was an Arkenite. They were escorted by a group of natives. The male human spritzed a fast-spreading mist from a small handheld device. Tormog deduced that the sprayed substance was a chemofluorescent agent that reacted with blood and other bodily fluids.

  Now what do I do?

  The Starfleeters would soon run out of blood trail to follow. If their point man was even reasonably competent as a tracker, he would soon realize Tormog had doubled back. It would be only a matter of time before they discovered him hiding in this literal crack in the wall.

  Then I’ll be trapped. He considered the merits of a preemptive attack, but he was in no position to launch an effective ambush. All he could do was hope that they continued far enough past his hiding spot that he could slip out and retreat before they noticed that they’d lost his trail, turned back, and retraced their steps.

  Voices led to a commotion. A frantic scramble of activity surrendered to the confused alarms of struggle, and then came screams of agony and fear. Sharp cracking sounds were followed by the heavy, dull thud of bodies falling like dead weight to the stone floor.

  A single shout unleashed four screeching phaser beams. The blue light was blinding, and the high-pitched sound of the Starfleet sidearms reverberated inside Tormog’s narrow slice in the stone. An unholy wailing echoed outside, and then silence fell, sudden, welcome, and heavy.

  The quiet lasted only a few seconds. More talking came next. The voices were lower now, their mood more subdued. After a few minutes, the shuffle and scrape of feet on stone heralded the departure of the survivors. Watching from his shadowy vantage, Tormog counted only the four Starfleet personnel and one native—a young female. She wore the ceremonial garment of the priestess, but she was not the same person he and the rest of his recon unit had seen back in the village. Looks like someone just earned a battlefield promotion.

  They moved away from him. He skulked from his secret redoubt and peered around a corner. None of them seemed to take notice of him. To his surprise, they were heading not for the surface, but farther into the caves, down a sloping passage into the deepest caverns.

  Where are they going?

  He was torn between his duty and his impulses. His every ragged nerve screamed at him to return to the surface, where his scanner might function well enough to let him stay a step ahead of Nimur, who had mutated into a crazed engine of slaughter. With open ground and fair warning, even a mere scientist such as himself might stand a chance of surviving long enough to rely upon the aid of reinforcements, whom Tobar had said were already on the way.

  Remaining in the caves, literally and
figuratively blind to the perils around him, seemed to Tormog like a fool’s errand. It made almost no tactical sense. And yet . . . like every other Klingon officer serving in the Gonmog ­Sector—which the Starfleeters still insisted on calling the Taurus Reach—he had standing orders to investigate and report on all Starfleet activity.

  Not only am I the last member of my team left alive, I’m the only one who knows Starfleet is here. His acute night vision watched the last glimmers of light from the Federation team’s scanning devices vanish around a distant curve in the tunnel. Plumbing deeper into these catacombs was the last thing Tormog wanted to do, but he knew his career and his life would likely arrive at premature ends if he let the Starfleeters escape his scrutiny. If I don’t find out what they’re looking for, and what they’re up to, the captain will have my head on a bat’leth.

  Tormog looked back and surveyed the carnage left behind by Nimur. Dead natives lay in a heap, their bodies twisted almost as cruelly as those of his comrades. Broken and bereft of her robe, the priestess Ysan looked to his eye like a piece of smashed fruit.

  If I meet Nimur alone, this will almost certainly be my fate.

  All at once, the prospect of staying closer to the Starfleeters seemed far more palatable. At the very least, they were a threat that Tormog could understand—and if nothing else, they would make good fodder for the rampaging Tomol woman.

  Tormog drew his d’k tahg and padded down the tunnel in stealthy, careful pursuit. He knew reinforcements would arrive within the hour, which gave him that long to find out why the Starfleeters were here—and whether they would need to be destroyed.

  • • •

  Familiar roads had become lost paths from a faded dream. That was all Nimur’s life before the Change was to her now—a fleeting vision, a phantasmagoria of half-­remembered names and faces. Former rivals and old friends, the Guardians who’d raised her, the ones who had accepted custody of her child. Who were they to her, now that she had become a stranger to herself?