by Dayton Ward
“What is that?” asked Kintaren.
“It is a means for the sky people to find us,” Nimur said, before crushing the object between her fingers. “No more.”
Watching in fascination, Kintaren asked, “What do we do now?”
The answer was obvious, at least to Nimur. The intruders must be dealt with; they carried weapons that were more powerful than the Wardens’ fire lances. They could not be allowed to impose their will upon the Tomol, and certainly not upon her.
We must attack.
12
Years spent in hospitals, sickbays, and trauma wards had made Anthony Leone all but immune to having his work disrupted by the occasional outburst from a patient. Somewhat less typical was the giggle fit he now heard erupting from somewhere outside his office.
As he sat at his desk, his computer terminal highlighting the physiological scans he and Nurse Amos had made of Seta and the other Tomol villagers, the sounds of at least two people laughing drifted to him from what he knew had to be the sickbay’s patient ward. There could be only one explanation, of course, a hunch he confirmed upon entering the room to find Seta sitting cross-legged on one of the beds, a mess tray balanced in her lap. Nurse Amos sat next to her, smiling as she watched the Tomol priestess eating something.
“I’ve never tasted anything like this before!”
Amos nodded, a motion so frenetic Leone thought she might hurt her neck. “Great, huh?” She pointed to the tray. “Now, take one and dip one end into the red stuff.”
Intrigued and a bit puzzled by what was taking place in his sickbay, Leone stepped farther into the room. “Hello, ladies.”
“Hello, Doctor,” Amos said before gesturing to Seta. “We’re having a snack.”
Now able to see what the tray held, Leone raised one eyebrow. “French fries and ketchup?”
“They are wonderful, Leone,” Seta said, holding up a fry, a blob of ketchup on one end. “Do you like them?”
“I like them well enough. I don’t know how well they’re suited for a cultural exchange, though.” He said the last part while casting a glance at Amos.
The nurse replied, “I scanned for allergies. There’s no danger, Doctor.”
“Sure, she won’t fall over dead during lunch,” Leone countered, “but if we’re trying to come up with ways to increase a race’s long-term chances for survival, I’m thinking fried foods isn’t the way to go.”
He heard the doors beyond the patient ward and leading to the corridor outside sickbay part and turned to see Lieutenant Klisiewicz enter the room. The science officer was carrying a computer data card and wore a tricorder slung over his left shoulder.
“Hello, Doctor,” he said, his gaze moving to Seta. “I came down to meet our guest.” Stepping closer to her bed, he offered, “Hello. My name is Stephen.”
The girl brushed her fingers against the front of her clothing before extending her hand. “Nurse Holly explained that you touch hands when you meet someone for the first time.”
Klisiewicz smiled as he took her hand in his. “Yes, we do.”
“Do you take care of people, like Leone and Holly?”
Shaking his head, the lieutenant replied, “Not the same way. I’m a scientist. I study more than just people.” He paused, then added, “I guess you could say I study everything.”
Amos explained, “He’s in charge of anything we want to learn about, especially when it comes to visiting someone new to us like you and your people.”
“Do you meet new kinds of people all the time?” Seta asked.
Klisiewicz smiled again. “Not as often as we’d like, so when we do, I’m very interested in finding out as much as I can about them.” He indicated Leone with a nod. “The doctor tells me you know more about your people than anyone else on Suba.”
The girl straightened her posture, obviously recognizing that she had been identified as the leader she was. “I am the Holy Sister of our village. I am supposed to know more than anyone, but my training is not complete.” Her expression fell as she spoke, and Leone noted the hint of guilt in her eyes.
“It’s okay, Seta,” Leone said. “We know you’re trying your best, and we promised we’d help you.” He pointed to Klisiewicz. “Stephen’s pretty good at that, actually.”
This seemed to mollify the young priestess. “My training with Ysan was really just beginning. She told me some of our first stories, such as how our people came to Suba long ago.”
Leone noted Klisiewicz eyeing him before the science officer said to her, “I know some of the stories already, but I’d like to hear them from you.”
“I do not know,” Seta said, casting her eyes toward the tray that still occupied her lap. “This knowledge is supposed to be only for the Holy Sisters. I am not certain what I am allowed to share. There is so much to understand, and Ysan had so much more to teach me.”
“Maybe I can help,” Klisiewicz said, moving to stand next to her and propping himself against the bed. “I already know some things, so maybe we can help each other.”
Confusion seemed to cloud Seta’s features. “I do not understand. How can you know our stories?”
“I’ve been reading some reports,” Klisiewicz said, then seemed to catch himself. “I guess you could call them stories, too, from our friends who were with you in the caves. The ones you showed the ob . . . your wordstone, and what you told them about it.”
Seta’s expression went from uncertainty to worry. “What? You know what happened at the wordstone? Vanessa told you?” She shifted her position on the bed, and Amos was barely able to catch the tray in her lap as Seta pulled her legs up to her and hugged her knees. “She promised me that she would share no secrets! She lied to me!”
“No, Seta,” Leone said as Amos sat next to her on the bed and placed a hand on her arm. “That’s not what he meant. It’s all right.”
“I have violated the trust of the Shepherds!” Seta said, closing her eyes and tucking her chin against her knees. “I have failed my people!” Tears were running down her cheeks as she rocked back and forth on the bed. Amos moved closer and put an arm around the girl’s shoulders.
“It’s okay,” the nurse offered. “You haven’t failed anyone. Our friend told us your story because she wants to help you but can’t do it by herself. Now we know your story, too, and we all can help you.”
Klisiewicz had moved from the bed and now was standing near the door leading from the patient ward. “I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes wide with concern. “I didn’t mean to upset her. I was just . . .”
“It’s okay,” Leone said, walking toward him and gesturing for him to follow. “Let Amos take this for a minute.” Once they were out of the room and crossing sickbay toward his office, he added, “She and Seta seem to have hit it off, but Seta’s had to take in a lot pretty quickly. Amos will get her calmed down, and it’ll be okay.”
The science officer nodded. “I hope so.” As Leone led the way into his office, he said, “Since I’m here, can we talk about your preliminary reports on the Tomol genetic structure?”
“Sure.” Leone gestured to the chair in front of his desk as he moved around to his own seat. “What’s up?”
By way of reply, Klisiewicz reached for the computer workstation on Leone’s desk and swiveled it so both men could see its screen, then inserted the data card he had been carrying into the terminal’s input slot and pressed the control to activate it. “I see you’ve been studying the same material, along with the information Doctor Babitz gave us. Her analysis shows that the Shedai markers in the Tomol DNA aren’t simply additions to the existing genetic structure but are replacements. Key elements of the original segments are missing. If this was a computer program, it’s like saying whole subroutines have been deleted and replaced with similar functions that do different things within the program’s same basic framework.”
“I k
now bodies, Lieutenant,” Leone said, “not computers.”
Klisiewicz tapped the computer screen. “But the principles are the same. Our bodies follow the instructions contained in our DNA and we get ears and cognitive thinking and immune systems and everything that makes us up. Computers work in a similar fashion. A program is executed and commands are issued and the computer carries out the instructions. Now, if a subroutine or a section of code gets removed from a program, it doesn’t perform correctly and you get errors. You can go back in and either replace the missing code or else substitute something else, but if you do that and you don’t account for all the variables and scenarios that can occur during the execution, you end up with different errors or other unexpected results. But you can’t just not run the program, because it’s a critical process. So you find a way to bypass the problem areas in order to get to a result you can live with.”
“So you’re saying . . . ?”
“I’m saying I think we’re going about this the wrong way. We’ve been operating under the assumption that the Change that afflicts the Tomol is something the Shedai introduced, but from what I’m seeing, I don’t think that’s the case, and I think the glyphs on the Preserver obelisk are bearing this out. The Tomol were always beings who evolved this way, or at least that’s how they were when the Shedai found them, and the Shedai tried to conquer and exploit them, just like the Klingons are trying to do now. They came in, messed with the Tomol’s DNA in an attempt to control the Change and maybe enhance or expand the scope of the transformation for their own purposes, and they screwed up. Maybe they took things too far and the Tomol began to grow beyond their ability to control, so they went back in and tried to fix it, and ended up making things worse, leading to what we have now.”
“I think I can feel my brain melting,” Leone said, resting his elbows on his desk. “That’s a lot of gaps you just filled with speculation. Why would the Shedai even do that?”
“Why did the Shedai do any of the things they did?”
“Okay, point taken, but how did you get here with your thinking?” When he saw the look of uneasiness on Klisiewicz’s face, Leone added, “The reason I ask is that the more I study the DNA, the more I see that the markers that obviously are Shedai in origin don’t seem to be the actual triggers for the Change. They’ve added some pieces to the puzzle, sure, but once you start to unravel the whole thing, most of it looks like it was already there. I didn’t catch it at first, and I know what to look for. What tipped you off?”
Klisiewicz seemed to ponder his answer for a moment—a long moment, Leone noted—before replying. “Based on what we know about the Preservers bringing the Tomol to Arethusa, and what we know of the Shedai’s methods, it seemed like an avenue worth exploring.” He shrugged. “I don’t know if it has any merit or not. That’s why I’m bringing it to you.”
“You should give yourself more credit, Lieutenant,” Leone said, genuinely impressed with the science officer’s apparent aptitude in a field that usually fell well outside the scope of his duties. “You may be on to something.”
Any reply Klisiewicz might have offered was interrupted by the high-pitched boatswain’s whistle of the ship’s internal communications system, followed by the voice of Captain Khatami. “Bridge to Lieutenant Klisiewicz.”
Reaching for the intercom on Leone’s desk, the science officer pressed the control to activate the unit. “Klisiewicz here, Captain.”
“Lieutenant, we need you back up here. That Klingon transponder we’ve been using to track Nimur and the other Changed just went dead, and we’re having trouble tracking their movements. Our last readings indicated they may be moving toward the bird-of-prey crash site.”
“That’s not good,” Leone said. “Our people are still down there, right?”
“We’re working on that, Doctor,” Khatami replied.
Klisiewicz rose from his seat. “On my way, Captain. Klisiewicz out.”
“Hey,” Leone said as the science officer headed for the door, “good work, Lieutenant. Let’s hope we have a chance to pursue this some more.”
Klisiewicz offered a grim, humorless smile. “Yeah, let’s hope.” He disappeared into the corridor, leaving Leone alone with the computer-generated schematics they had been studying.
“Damn fine work, Lieutenant,” he said to himself. “If I’m not careful, you’re going to put me out of a job.”
13
“Stand by for transport,” said Captain Khatami, her voice hard with concern as it burst from the speaker grille of Katherine Stano’s communicator. “No arguments, Commander.”
With Commander Theriault and Lieutenant Lerax guiding the rest of the Endeavour landing party along with Kerlo and his fellow Tomol to cover, Stano crouched behind a large boulder situated at the edge of the devastated clearing opposite the direction from which Nimur and her followers should be coming. The oversized rock would provide momentary concealment, but she held no illusions that any protection it offered would be little more than fleeting. Wielding her phaser pistol in her right hand, she raised the communicator in her other.
“Captain, there’s no time to get us all out of here before they show up. We can’t leave the Tomol here by themselves, and we damned sure can’t beam them up to the ship.” Just transporting the Endeavour personnel and Theriault to safety would take nearly a full minute, given the dozen men and women Lerax had brought with him to the surface at Stano’s own insistence.
Not a bad idea by itself, Kate. Too bad it’s biting you in the ass right now.
For the first time since taking up her position of concealment, Stano paused to listen to the surrounding jungle. The sounds of teeming wildlife that had returned to the area following the Endeavour’s orbital bombardment were gone again, making her own breathing seem unnaturally loud. Whatever creatures called the forest home appeared to have fled, and Stano was certain they were the smart ones.
Looking to either side of her meager protective barrier, Stano saw that Lerax and Theriault had succeeded in moving everyone to places of concealment within the tree line and what scant cover it contained. “Talk to me, Lerax. Where the hell are they?” It had been less than two minutes since the warning from Lieutenant Klisiewicz that the rogue Tomol—or the “Changed,” as Kerlo and his companions were calling them—were heading back to the bird-of-prey’s crash site, but the Endeavour’s science officer also had reported some sort of difficulty tracking Nimur and the others with the ship’s sensors.
“Tricorder readings are indistinct, Commander,” replied the Edoan security chief from where he crouched behind the trunk of a large tree. He was holding the tricorder in his center hand while his other two limbs brandished phaser pistols. “I did detect transformed Tomol life readings to the north, but they keep fading from my scans.”
“Wonderful,” Theriault said, kneeling behind another tree to the lieutenant’s right.
In the distance, Stano watched what little remained of the Nereus sun continue its slide behind the treetops. Shadows were growing longer, and in the fading light she saw something moving in the sky. “Damn, I think they’re already here.”
“Hang on, Commander,” Khatami snapped. “I’m getting you out of there right now.”
Before Stano could reply, a burst of static exploded from her communicator, then the unit’s audio port popped from its housing and the indicator lights on its faceplate all went dark.
What the hell?
“Stano to Endeavour,” she said, tapping the unit but receiving no response. She repeated the call with the same results.
“Here they come!”
Leaning around her tree, Theriault was pointing to the north, and Stano looked up to see seven objects drawing closer, growing larger with every passing second. They were flying in a wedgelike formation, with one of the figures at the front flanked by its companions, which all seemed slightly smaller than their leader. All of the
m exhibited dark, wide wings extending from lean bodies that to Stano’s eyes looked like the living embodiment of spears or arrows. Their configuration reminded her of the flight exercises she had undertaken as a cadet at Starfleet Academy, maneuvering single-seat training craft around the Jovian moons.
That doesn’t sound so bad right about now. The thought taunted Stano as she tightened the grip on her phaser and dropped her useless communicator to the ground. “Stand by weapons!”
“You fools!” Tormog shouted. “Don’t you understand? They destroyed your communicator with a simple thought! They can kill us with their minds! We stand no chance against such power!”
“Don’t let them get too close,” Theriault said, earning her a quizzical look from Stano. The Sagittarius’s first officer added, “From everything we’ve seen, their telekinetic powers seem to work only if they’re in close proximity. In other words, don’t let them get a bead on us.”
“Easier said than done,” Stano said, before instructing Lerax to quickly pass that information to the rest of the landing party. I’ll take whatever edge I can get.
The flying creatures broke formation, the leader pushing forward while its companions separated and spread out in what to Stano looked like a maneuver to sweep the length of the clearing. Holding her phaser out in front of her and propping her arm against the boulder, she sighted down the weapon’s length at the approaching fliers. Her finger was tightening on the firing stud when a harsh whine of harnessed power pierced the air and multiple streaks of brilliant fire sliced through the darkening air, launching from points along the tree line and converging on a single target: the leader of the approaching Changed Tomol. Six beams of energy struck the creature as it was making its descent toward the surface and Stano saw it buckle beneath the onslaught, but only for a moment. Kerlo and his fellow Tomol were bringing their weapons to bear, employing whatever mysterious energy source was used to power them.
