His face was frozen in a grimace of sheer terror, as if he had died of fright, and his fingers were curled into grasping claws. It might have been lack of oxygen that produced such terror, Leah told herself, because his headgear lay about a meter away from his paralyzed hand.
“Is that ... the old miner?” she asked, just to make sure.
“Yes,” answered Maltz. “He was going to be our guide, and he must have become Craycroft’s guide instead.”
Young Herbert turned away from the sight, while Gradok lifted his light into the blackness beyond. Leah turned to her tricorder, trying to get an estimate of how long he had been dead.
“Maybe it’s the conditions in this pit,” she reported to the others, “but he hasn’t decomposed much. I don’t think he’s been dead long.”
Gradok kicked the body out of the way, and he and Maltz continued plunging into the darkness. Herbert stood petrified on the stairs, as stiff as the dead Tiburonian, and Leah had to squeeze past him. “You can stay here if you want,” she told the youth.
“No, no, I’ll go,” he insisted. “Captains first.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Thanks.”
Brahms only gave the Tiburonian’s body a passing glance as she walked by, concentrating on the uneven floor and her tricorder readings. They were in a dark tunnel that had also been carved from solid tar. This tunnel was different only in that some kind of moss grew on the walls at intervals, along with thick vines underneath it.
Brahms checked her tricorder but didn’t note anything unusual about the plant growth—it was probably a natural occurrence from the dampness and the increased oxygen. These types of plants, including the fungus she was picking up, didn’t need much sunlight. They may be getting sunlight from the surface, she surmised; maybe these were the roots of the cattails above.
“We see him!” said a sharp voice in her ear.
Leah jogged in her heavy suit to catch up with Maltz and Gradok. She instantly knew it was bad, because the Klingons were backed up against the mossy walls of the cavern. Her eyes followed their light beams to a frail form sitting on a rock, and the being turned around and gazed at her with blurry, indistinct eyes.
To her horror and amazement, it was the old Tiburonian, Krussel! Only this time, he was alive and grinning contentedly at them.
twenty
A phaser beam struck the grinning figure of Krussel and blew him apart in a haze of green confetti. His body floated down from above like a feather pillow torn apart in a pillow fight. Instantly, the Klingons dropped to a firing crouch, their disruptors aimed, looking for the source of the phaser blast in the dark tunnel. Leah glanced at Herbert, half-expecting that he was the one who had fired the unexpected shot, but the lad was cowering from the remains of Krussel, which were still floating down.
They didn’t look like parts of a body, thought Leah, that was for sure. Unfortunately, there was only pitch blackness in the tunnel, and their pitiful lights did little to dispel it.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” screeched a voice. From the blackness ahead of them, a phaser skittered across the floor, and Leah bent down to grab it. Then a figure emerged from the inky blackness, wearing civilian clothes and waving his hands frantically in the air.
“That wasn’t Krussel!” shouted Colin Craycroft. “That wasn’t real!”
Maltz kicked at the remains of the old miner, which looked like dried leaves, then he leveled his disruptor at Craycroft. His voice boomed from his helmet. “What in Klin was it? Speak fast, or I’ll kill you!”
“Yes, go ahead and kill me! I beg you!” The crazed human opened his shirt and showed them his flabby chest.
Leah quickly stepped between them. “Hold your fire, mister. I have some questions for Mr. Craycroft here.”
The old Klingon lowered his weapon and glowered at Craycroft. “Yes, I have some questions, too.”
Brahms turned to the tavern keeper. “First of all, there’s air in here? You can breathe?”
“Yes! No!” he answered confusedly. “Yes, there is air, but no, don’t take off your helmets. They’ll confuse you, like they did with Krussel. Listen, come with me, and I’ll show you.”
The little man rushed off down the corridor, and Maltz and Gradok were quick to follow. Brahms gave Herbert a shove, and they both made a wide path around the pile of leaves that had looked like a humanoid a few seconds ago. Leah could well understand the boy’s fear; but this was a volunteer mission for him, so he had no reason to complain. Hearing a discussion ahead of her, she hurried to catch up with Maltz, Gradok, and their new guide, Colin Craycroft.
“You can’t con a con artist!” Craycroft said with a satisfied chortle. “I knew they were fake. For his own protection, I sent Krussel back to the shuttlecraft, but then he picked up your ship on sensors. He panicked ... forgot to put on the camouflage. But at least he told me where to look. Wait’til you see it!” He skipped ahead of them down the gloomy corridor.
“Don’t get out of my sight,” warned Maltz.
But they needn’t have worried about that, because they soon emerged into a vast, well-lit engine room. Huge, gleaming crankshafts and rods churned away, and massive silos towered dozens of meters into the air, turning slowly, gurgling softly. It was difficult to tell what kind of energy they were producing, or storing, but this was well-maintained equipment. Nevertheless, there were piles of dead leaves scattered around the expansive floor.
“What is this place?” asked Maltz suspiciously.
“I don’t know, but I claim salvage rights!” Craycroft said, giggling. He dashed through the cavernous chamber, pointing at the piles of dead vegetation. “Don’t worry, it’s safe. I killed them all!”
“What has this got to do with the Genesis Wave?” demanded the old Klingon.
That stopped the crazed human in his path. “Genesis Wave? I thought that was just a rumor you were using to keep away the competition. This is a secret production facility—for what, I don’t know. But if they want to remain secret, they’ve got to pay us to go away. And then a little stipend every now and then to keep quiet. Either that, or I file salvage claims ... to these ruins.”
“These aren’t ruins,” insisted Brahms. “And according to you, this place was inhabited ... before you killed all of them.”
“Besides, we’re going to kill you.” Maltz aimed his disruptor at the agitated human.
“Wait!” begged Craycroft, holding up his hands in supplication. “I saved your lives! I led you to this place! It wasn’t just Krussel—I have sophisticated mine detectors on my shuttlecraft, and I was the one who spotted this underground complex. And I killed these creatures in self-defense!”
“Hold on,” Brahms said quickly. She interceded with the old Klingon. “I said we’re taking him prisoner. We could use his shuttlecraft, and he might be worth a ransom to someone.”
Maltz scowled behind his faceplate, but he finally said, “Yes, sir.” Pulling a coil of rope from his sash, he strode toward Colin Craycroft and grabbed him by his wrists. When the human put up a struggle, the Klingon smashed him in the mouth, drawing blood. After that, Craycroft went silently and allowed Maltz to tie him to a pole with his hands behind his back.
“This is a death sentence!” shouted Craycroft, spitting out a tooth. “You’ll see. You need me!” He kept babbling, but it was incomprehensible.
“I’ve had enough of this.” Without hesitation, Brahms drew a phaser—she now had two of them—and set it for stun. Then she drilled Colin Craycroft with a bright beam, and he slumped into a pile at the bottom of the pole. The cavernous chamber was much quieter without his ranting.
The Klingons again signaled to one another and started forward, inspecting the braces that held up the vats, looking for hidden enemies. At least the gleaming silos looked like vats to Brahms, and her tricorder indicated that they contained an unidentified liquid. From a quick glance at the chemical components in the vats, she guessed it was fertilizer. Leah wanted to find a computer terminal, or
other high-level processor, so she concentrated her tricorder search on power sources and electromagnetic impulses.
Herbert walked around, gazing up at the ceiling, which was covered in a thick growth of moss.
“This place is the key!” crowed Maltz, his loud voice sounding deranged in her headgear. “I know they were here—I can feel them. This is the lair of the enemy.”
“This complex is big—goes back a long way,” Brahms said, amazed at the readings she was getting. “We could spend a week searching it.”
Gradok suddenly ran to the wall and began ripping away the vines and moss. Slowly he uncovered a sealed metal doorway. The big Klingon tugged on the door and beat it with his fists a couple of times. “Youngster!” he called. “Do you have a way of getting this door open?”
It took Herbert a moment to realize that he was being addressed, and he stumbled forward. “Let me look at it.” To her surprise, the lad didn’t use his eyes but instead used his tricorder. On her tricorder, Leah was picking up impressive circuitry behind the door, and she was all in favor of getting it opened.
Before the young human could work any magic, they heard a gruesome scream from behind them. The mangled cry was enough to make them all whirl around. It had to be Craycroft, thought Leah, but their prisoner was too far away—behind too many poles and braces—for them to see him.
“You should have used a longer stun,” said Maltz.
“Was that Mr. Craycroft?” asked Herbert. “It didn’t even sound human.”
“I’ll go look,” volunteered Gradok, lifting his disruptor rifle and trudging off toward the entrance to the mammoth cavern. A moment later, he disappeared in the forest of machines and silos.
“If we contact the ship,” said Leah, “maybe they can transport us to the other side of that door. We’re not that deep inside the crust.”
Maltz nodded thoughtfully, but before they could act on the suggestion, they heard startled shouts; and disruptor beams flashed across the empty spaces of the cavern. A moment later, the entire complex was plunged into darkness, and all they had were the insufficient light beams on their helmets.
“Gradok!” Maltz shouted, trying to raise his comrade. “Gradok, respond!”
“Sir!” cried Herbert, pointing a trembling hand into the darkness, where a row of ghostly shapes had suddenly materialized and were slowly advancing upon them.
Brahms didn’t wait to see more of this; she aimed her phaser and raked the front row of attackers. But the stun setting had no effect on them, and she cranked it up to full. This time, both she and Maltz cut loose with withering beamed fire, blasting the front row of attackers into flaming confetti. Lit up like a mobile bonfire with flames leaping off their backs, the mysterious enemy kept advancing.
Within seconds, Leah, Maltz, and Herbert were backed up against the door they had uncovered. Leah drew her second phaser and blasted away with both weapons at the advancing horde, while Maltz clubbed them to shreds with the butt of his rifle. Still the enemy kept coming from the blackness, reforming into ranks from the flaming debris.
Just when there was no place left to go, the door behind them creaked open, and a strong hand grabbed Leah and yanked her into the darkness. Herbert and Maltz wasted no time following her, as they ducked into the unknown.
Geordi La Forge bolted upright in his bed, sweat streaming down his face. His stomach was knotted, and his clothes felt clammy. For a moment, he was totally disoriented by all the alien sounds and smells—not his normal sounds and smells—and he was even more confused by the unfamiliar darkness.
I’m blind, he reminded himself. I’m in sickbay, not engineering. No, I don’t belong here, but this is where I am. But damn, that dream was awful.
Before he had a chance to stop it, the dream replayed in his mind’s video log. He was a prisoner in a transparent cage in a laboratory, which he could see much more clearly than his ocular implants should allow. He wanted out of this crystal cage in the worst way, because he could imagine a giant tree where he belonged. The great tree towered above him, offering sanctuary, shelter, nourishment, along with Leah Brahms and everything else that gave him comfort in life. The longing to escape his cell was the strongest urge he had ever experienced, and he felt totally bereft without that tree.
The tree—the answer to everything—was behind a door. He knew that. The object of his desire was behind a closed door that was very near—Geordi could feel it like the heat radiating off a fire.
After a moment, he lay back in his bed, trying to shake off the beautiful but disturbing images. Geordi didn’t know which was worse—being a prisoner or feeling helpless. He supposed they were both related. At the same time that he saw things more clearly in his dreams than he ever had, he couldn’t see at all in real life. Where was the door he was supposed to find? He felt its presence very near at hand.
Leah blinked in amazement, because in the bobbing light of her headlamp stood Gradok, half-naked with his suit and hood gone—but grinning broadly. She heard scuffling, and she turned to see Maltz and Herbert struggling to shut the door Gradok had opened for them. She leaned into the oblong metal hatch, but the forces on the other side were also determined. Thick vines crept around the side of the door and lashed at their arms, while a concerted force pushed against them.
It wasn’t until Gradok muscled into the fray that they got the door closed and latched, chopping off dozens of branches, which fell to the earthen floor.
Panting so loudly it echoed in her own ears, Leah Brahms turned around. She didn’t think she had enough breath in her lungs to gasp, but gasp she did. She was standing outdoors, with a starlit sky sparkling above her head—the stars looked like loose diamonds sprinkled on black velvet. In the distance, a ghostly horizon bathed in mists and lit by Lomar’s huge moon beckoned with the enchantment of a fairy land. The tar bogs glistened like black pools of forgetfulness.
“How did we get outside?” she asked.
“Don’t trust your eyes,” said a voice as a hand thrust a tricorder into her view. She looked down to see energy readings leaping across the tiny screen, then she looked up at Herbert’s youthful face. “It’s a holodeck,” he said.
“Gradok, how did you get in here?” Maltz asked with suspicion.
He pointed toward the door they had just closed. “Those creatures ... they surrounded me, but I managed to cut a hole in the wall with my disruptor. It was just big enough for me to get through, not my suit. They took the suit, and I barely got out of it in time. Then I ran along the wall until I found the door.”
“So a hole is open, and they’re coming through?” asked Brahms.
“The hole is small,” answered Gradok, “but we should keep moving.”
“What happened to Mr. Craycroft?” asked Herbert with concern.
The big Klingon flinched at the memory. “Those plants were growing all over the human. He must be dead.”
“Good riddance,” muttered Maltz.
“You can take your suit off,” suggested Gradok. “The air is good in here.”
“Belay that,” said Brahms. She lifted her phaser and shot a beam straight into Gradok’s chest, and he promptly slumped at her feet, unconscious.
Maltz whirled on her. “Why did you do that?”
“To see if he was real,” Leah answered. “Remember, the two Krussels we saw, and what Craycroft told us? They’re shape-shifters ... or something. He’ll come to in a few seconds. Until we need to take our suits off for a specific reason, we leave them on.”
The engineer began wandering through the starlit scenery, checking her tricorder. “Herbert, if this is a holodeck, then there’s got to be a computer running it. Use your tricorder to help me find it. Maltz, cover us.”
“But, Captain, we’ve got to get more people—explosives!” protested the old Klingon. “We’ve got to destroy these evil creatures.”
“First of all, we don’t even know if these beings set off the Genesis Wave,” answered Brahms. “We’ve got to find proof, an
d I haven’t seen any. If this is a conventional holodeck, then maybe they have a computer, which we can access. Until then, we’re the intruders, and they’ve got every right to attack us.”
“Yes, sir.” Grumbling under his breath, the grizzled Klingon jogged back to his fallen comrade, Gradok. The weapons master sat up, slowly regaining consciousness.
Brahms shouted loudly, “Computer, end simulation!” Nothing happened, and the two humans continued to explore in the darkness for several minutes. Without warning, there were flashes of disruptor fire behind them, followed by Klingons howling in victory. Leah tried to suppress her fear and concentrate on the task at hand.
Herbert called excitedly, “Captain Brahms, there’s a strong energy source over here!”
She rushed toward the youth, monitoring her own tricorder readings as she ran. Herbert had stopped at the edge of a cliff overlooking a rather picturesque black bog; it seemed likely that no one would progress much beyond this point. Leah could easily make out the energy surges that had attracted the lad, but she suspected it was an energy coupling or a conduit, not a computer station. That would be a start.
“Step back,” she ordered, drawing one of her phasers. The boy didn’t wait to be told again, and he scurried away. Without worrying about accuracy, Leah cranked up the phaser to a destructive setting and turned it loose on what appeared to be a methane mist floating over the bog. The mist started to shimmer, and sparks flew out of nowhere.
Leah stopped the phaser barrage. When the smoke cleared, she saw that she had wreaked enough damage to reveal a black-and-gold grid where there had been a distant horizon. After a few more flickers, the entire scene switched to a beautiful copper beach, complete with gently waving palms and a quaint beach house in the distance.
The Klingons staggered toward her, shielding their eyes from the sun-drenched scenery. “What is this supposed to be?” demanded Maltz.
“An island ... on Earth. Or Pacifica.” Brahms frowned. “Pacifica? Why should that mean something?”
STAR TREK: TNG - The Genesis Wave, Book Two Page 22
