by Greg Cox
“Why Usilde?” Una asked. “Why arrive on this planet in particular?”
“Purely a matter of chance and quantum geography,” Eljor explained. “As it happens, the curvature of space-time in both universes, along with various other contributing factors, such as brane energy differentials, cosmic string entanglements, and the prevailing multiversal currents, deposited us here on Usilde rather than elsewhere, to the misfortune of the Usildar and every other life-form on this world.”
“Tough luck for them,” Una said, “and anyone else you run into.”
“Which is why I must stress that this world is only the beginning,” Eljor warned. “Now that my people know that there are other, possibly competitive species roaming the stars, they will be intent on eliminating that threat.”
Which could spell bad news for the Federation, April realized, not to mention the Klingons, the Romulans, the Orions, and countless unaligned and independent races, some of them yet to be discovered by Starfleet.
“So what do you want of us?” he asked. “How do we prevent this crisis from escalating?”
Eljor spoke slowly and deliberately, as though every word cost hir.
“I cannot permit the Jatohr to do to other worlds what we are doing to Usilde. This madness must end, and I need your help to make things right.”
Eljor clicked a control on the remote and the cage door slid open, releasing April and Una, who wasted no time exiting the cell. Retrieving their equipment, s/he returned the laser pistols and communicators to hir former prisoners.
“I caution you not to communicate with your ship immediately,” the scientist said. “Now that my people are monitoring the Enterprise, any transmissions on that frequency might be detected.”
“We could try to vary the wavelength,” Una suggested, “and establish an encrypted channel.”
Eljor frowned on that idea. “I would not advise such an attempt. Do not underestimate my people’s zeal where our security is concerned.”
“Even still, perhaps it would be worth the risk.” April considered Una, who had already been through enough, in his judgment. “We could contact the ship just long enough for them to beam you back to the Enterprise, while Eljor and I settle matters here.”
Una shook her head. “With all due respect, sir, my mission isn’t over. If there’s even a chance we can bring back our people from wherever the Jatohr banished them, I’m not going anywhere.” She dug in her proverbial heels. “And as you said earlier, you need someone to watch your back.”
“Can’t argue with that, I suppose,” April said, respecting her decision. He suspected that he’d be just as adamant if he was in her shoes. He wished, however, that he could safely contact Lorna—and Sarah—back on the ship. The clock was ticking down to the moment when, per his orders, the Enterprise would attempt to escape the system. “Very well, Lieutenant. Count yourself in for the duration.” He looked at Eljor. “How can we help you?”
“We need to reach the master control room, which is located directly below my laboratory, the better to allow me easy access to the Transfer Key and generator. The room is staffed by a crew of devoted operators who, despite my eminence, would never permit me to do what must be done. On my own, I am helpless because there are no other Jatohr that I can I trust to share my views, but perhaps with your assistance . . .”
April wanted more details. “What exactly do you intend to do?”
“Disable the transfer-field generator, thereby eliminating the primary threat to both your ship and the Usildar. Without my dreadful creation at their disposal, my people will be forced to make peace with the Usildar rather than simply eliminating them. Compromise will be easier than conquest.”
I can work with that, April thought. Removing the transfer field from the equation would take the Enterprise out of danger and, possibly, shift the balance of power on the planet toward the Usildar, giving them back the freedom to chart their own course into the future. And as for the Jatohr . . . ideally, the Federation could find them a safe haven elsewhere in the quadrant.
Granted, that was easier said than done. Class-M planets were eagerly sought after by both the Federation and the Klingons, to name but two galactic powers. Finding an uninhabited world just for the Jatohr would be tricky, but perhaps they could be persuaded to share a world with some open-minded Federation colonists if they were promised a continent or two for privacy’s sake. It wouldn’t be a perfect solution, as far as the Prime Directive was concerned, but it would be a good sight better than the current situation on Usilde—and far safer for all concerned.
“That’s the best plan I’ve heard so far,” he said. “But we need to move briskly, before matters escalate further.”
He saw no need to mention the Enterprise’s upcoming departure. Mutual trust was all very well and good, but April was not inclined to test it. What Eljor didn’t know couldn’t hurt the ship’s chances of making a strategic retreat. They just couldn’t afford to dally if he and Una wanted to make it back to the ship in time.
“But before you disable the transfer device,” Una asked, “will we be able to recover our lost crew members?”
“Possibly, if the opportunity allows,” Eljor said, sounding evasive again. “But do not forget that there are much larger matters at stake here, involving the fate of this entire world and, in time, many more worlds to come.”
It was obvious that rescuing the landing party and the other missing crew members was low on the scientist’s list of priorities. Sadly, April saw hir point; while he shared Una’s desire to rescue his crew from eternal exile to another universe, and fully understood why she was dead set on that goal, the captain had to consider the safety of the ship and the Federation first.
The clock was ticking in more ways than one. It was only a matter of time before Woryan demanded results from Eljor’s experiments and found out about the scientist’s shifting loyalties. If they were going to defang the Jatohr, they needed to do so with all deliberate speed, no matter what sacrifices were required.
“We’ll do what we can for them, Una,” April promised, “but stopping the Jatohr and saving the ship is job one. Are we on the same page here?”
“Aye, sir,” she said gravely. “But I’m not going to forget them . . . ever.”
I wouldn’t expect you to, he thought. But first things first.
He turned back to Eljor.
“How do we get to that control room?”
Thirteen
A private ramp connected the laboratory to the master control room one level below.
“One of the perks of being the First Scientist,” Eljor explained, “as well as the esteemed creator of the transfer-field generator.” The Jatohr scientist led Una and the captain down a long spiral ramp that they indeed appeared to have to themselves. “It was deemed only fitting and sensible that I should always have ready access to the core of the generator.”
“Rank has its privileges,” April said, nodding. “And genius too, I suppose.”
“Which my people may soon have cause to regret,” Eljor said ruefully, “now that I must betray their trust in me . . . for all our sakes.”
Una hurried down the ramp. She could well imagine that the conscience-stricken scientist had profoundly mixed feelings about what they were attempting, but, frankly, she was less concerned with Eljor’s moral dilemma than with completing their mission and rescuing her lost comrades.
I’m coming for you, Tim. Hang on . . . wherever you are.
That persistent rumbling echoed all around them, grating on her nerves. “What’s that irritating noise, anyway?” she asked.
“Merely ongoing renovations,” Eljor said, continuing to slime down the ramp. “Elsewhere in the sanctuary.”
“What kind of renovations?” April asked.
“Nothing that need concern us now.”
A sealed doorway greeted them
at the bottom of the ramp. Indecipherable alien runes were inscribed upon the door. Una found the Jatohr’s written language just as baffling as their speech had been before the universal translator had finally gotten a handle on it. Better late than never.
“Beyond this portal lays the control room,” Eljor said. “There should be no more than three operators in attendance, but you must strike quickly. Our activities will not go undetected for long.”
It occurred to Una that Eljor was using them to do the dirty work of actually attacking his fellow Jatohr so that s/he could keep hir claspers clean in that regard.
She had no problem with that.
“Lasers on stun,” April reminded her. “We’re after that generator, not revenge.”
“Understood, sir.”
Eljor had brought no weapon, not even a stun-globe. S/he had assured them that they were unlikely to encounter any such globes in the control room; the floating security devices were primarily employed in the labor camps, to keep the Usildar under observation and control. The citadel was considered a secure location, and the Jatohr had no reason to fear that one of their own might attempt to seize control of the Transfer Key.
That’s going to cost them, Una thought. I hope.
“May posterity forgive me,” Eljor murmured. “Ready your weapons.”
The scientist approached the doorway and gurgled a brief command. The gleaming door dilated open to admit hir.
“Now,” Eljor said. “Be quick about it.”
“You don’t need to tell us that,” April said. By his reckoning, more than thirty minutes had transpired since he had first beamed down to the planet, which meant he had less than half an hour to get back in touch with the Enterprise before the ship attempted a tactical retreat as ordered.We need to get that generator shut down before then.
The control room was circular and ringed with screens, like the bridge on the Enterprise, and laid out in tiers of concentric circles, like an old-fashioned wedding cake, with sloped ramps connecting the levels. A towering cylindrical apparatus dominated the center of the chamber, resting atop a sloped pedestal, while workstations ringed the central column facing outward toward the screens. Elevated catwalks ran along the upper levels. The air felt dryer than elsewhere in the citadel, possibly as a concession to the delicate equipment. The cylinder hummed and crackled noisily.
“Professor?” A trio of Jatohr technicians looked up at Eljor’s arrival, then reacted in surprise to the sight of the two humanoids accompanying hir. Their eyestalks extended and they started to turn away from their stations. “What is this—”
April’s laser stunned the nearest operator, even as Una shot past him to knock out the next one, but the third had time enough to gurgle sharply and jab at hir control panel with a metallic digit. A reverberating basso alarm, similar to the one that had pursued Una across the labor camp, sounded through the control room.
“Damn,” the captain muttered. “Seal the door, Professor. We’re going to have company.”
“Without a doubt.” Eljor, who had hung back by the doorway, gurgled a command and the door dialed shut behind them. S/he took a moment to manipulate an adjacent control panel. “There! I have reconfigured the security protocols to deny admission to any new visitors, but I fear that the door is not strong enough to withstand a prolonged—”
“Traitor!”
A fourth operator, who had been hidden from view on the opposite side of the central column, charged at the scientist with surprising speed. The metallic claspers at the end of hir right forelimb clicked together to form a sharp point, which s/he rammed into Eljor’s back with enough force to pierce the other Jatohr’s brittle carapace. Eljor gurgled in shock and pain as the point of hir attacker’s arm burst from hir chest, spraying dark green blood on the sealed door. S/he slumped forward, sliding off the prosthetic arm impaling hir.
“No!” April exclaimed before turning his laser pistol on the hostile Jatohr. A crimson beam stunned the murderous slug into unconsciousness, but the damage to Eljor was done. The scientist was still alive, but watery olive blood spilled from both the front and the back of hir punctured armor. A distinctive metallic smell, along with its color, suggested that, like most mollusks (and Vulcans, for that matter), the Jatohr had copper-based blood that employed hemocyanin instead of hemoglobin to transport oxygen through hir veins. Hir breathing was labored, making Una fear that the scientist’s lung had been injured, along with who knew what other internal organs.
“It seems I was . . . mistaken about the number of operators on duty,” Eljor said haltingly, gasping for breath. “The commander must have . . . assigned additional personnel during the present crisis . . .”
Una rushed to the wounded scientist’s side. She was no xenobiologist; she had no idea what constituted a mortal injury to a two-meter-tall gastropod, but being speared through the trunk had to be serious. And s/he was losing a lot of blood.
“How badly are you hurt?” she asked. “What can we do?”
Eljor reeled unsteadily, struggling to stay upright.
“Just help me to the primary control column, so that I can finish this . . . and do what must be done.”
April hurried to assist Una. Working together, they draped Eljor’s arms over their shoulders and grabbed onto the injured slug’s leaking trunk, heedless of the slick, sticky fluid flowing from hir wounds. They half supported, half dragged the bleeding scientist toward the control column. The wizened Jatohr was heavier than s/he looked, but hir natural mucous made dragging hir across the floor slightly easier. That the silvery slime was now streaked with green worried Una.
That can’t be good, she thought.
Reaching the column, Eljor sagged against it.
“Thank you, my alien friends. My life is . . . seeping away. I could not have managed without you.”
The low-pitched alarm kept booming. Isolating the source of the racket, April blasted the speaker with his laser pistol. Sparks flared from the device as it fell mercifully silent.
“Now maybe we can hear ourselves think,” the captain said.
But the quiet was short-lived. Woryan’s irate face took over several of the viewscreens lining the walls of the control room. Hir bellowing voice accosted the intruders.
“Despicable creatures! I knew you were not to be trusted!”
April lifted his chin to address one of the larger screens. “Trust is a two-way street, Commander, and you’ve offered precious little on your part. And for the record, my name is April. Robert Timothy April.”
“Your senseless appellation means nothing to me,” Woryan ranted. “Give us back our control room. You do not belong there!”
“And you don’t belong on Usilde,” April shot back, “but that didn’t seem to stop you from taking it.”
Una lowered her voice to question Eljor. “Can your commander ‘remove’ us like the others?”
“Not while we remain in possession of this control room,” the scientist assured her. Green dribbled from hir mouth, indicating possible internal bleeding. “But Woryan is unlikely to let us keep it for long.”
Proving hir point, Una heard commotion outside the sealed entrance to the chamber. Jatohr voices shouted angrily, loud enough to be heard through the contracted door. Something pounded against the door with great impact. Dust fell from the ceiling.
“You cannot defy us!” Woryan declared from the wall screens. “We will break down the door if we must!”
“That is no idle threat,” Eljor said to Una and April, “but you must not . . . let my people retake this chamber before . . . I am done.” The scientist was quivering from head to foot, seemingly staying upright only through sheer force of will. S/he was having trouble keeping hir tentacles elevated as well. They swayed up and down erratically. “I need more time!”
Pistol in hand, April headed toward the door, leaving Una with the dying scientis
t. “I’ll hold them off if I have to,” he said. “Una, you stay with Eljor. Help hir finish this.”
“Yes, sir.”
The scientist’s right arm remained draped over Una’s strong shoulders, while the exhausted lieutenant struggled to keep her grip on Eljor’s increasingly slippery, bloody trunk and exoskeleton. It had been hours, Una realized, since she’d eaten or rested, and even her exceptional constitution was nearing its limits. Propping the shaky Jatohr up, she examined the imposing mechanism at the heart of the transfer-field generator.
The central control column towered over them, stretching all the way to the ceiling, which was at least twenty-five meters overhead. The bottom quarter of the column, rising up from the pedestal, consisted of machinery, complete with gauges and controls and instrumentation whose functions were not readily apparent; Una made a mental note to scan the equipment with her tricorder if and when an opportunity arose. Meanwhile, the bulk of the column consisted of a clear cylinder, roughly seventy centimeters across, that appeared to be an advanced holographic imaging tank, which was presently displaying, ominously enough, a three-dimensional view of the Enterprise’s bridge, seemingly unfolding in real time. Una registered the sight of First Officer Simon occupying the captain’s chair while Doctor April paced restlessly within the command well. Both women looked exceedingly tense and worried.
Una knew how they felt.
“How are you doing this?” she asked. “Spying on us this way?”
Not even the Enterprise’s scanners were so sophisticated when it came to locking onto images from inside an alien spacecraft or outpost. Moreover, the Enterprise had not detected any high-powered surveillance satellites in orbit around Usilde earlier.
