The Cleanup

by Robert T. Jeschonek

  “Not good!” said Ven-Sa, still drifting upward. “Not exactly what I wanted to hear!”

  “Any chance of a more gradual letdown?” said the black-haired woman.

  “Working on it,” said the little man. He shifted to one side, and Em-Lin saw a blue, multilegged shape beneath him. At first, she thought that it was his lower body, but as she continued to watch, she realized that the shape was not part of him at all. In fact, the little man was actually sitting on top of what looked like some kind of device or creature. It was hard to tell from a distance. His legs were wrapped around it, and it seemed to be keeping him from floating away.

  A flutter of movement caught Em-Lin’s eye, and she turned her head to see Pika Chi-Sa falling up against the ceiling of a side chamber not far from her. The ceiling was about five meters above the floor, and Chi-Sa ended up stuck flat against it.

  “Just for the record,” said Chi-Sa, his voice echoing through the shrine, “I never wanted to join the Dominion to begin with.”

  “Not what you said at the time,” Ven-Sa said curtly. Em-Lin noticed an edge of panic in his voice as he continued to climb toward the peak of the main chamber’s ceiling.

  Suddenly, then, Ven-Sa gasped as he dropped ten meters and stopped. In the side chamber across the shrine, Chi-Sa also fell the same distance and froze in midair.

  “What’s up, Soloman?” said the black-haired woman on the pillar.

  “Or down, as the case may be,” said the Starfleeter with the light skin and dark hair.

  “A…‘hiccup’ in the system,” said the little bald man at the altar panel. Apparently, his name was “Soloman.” “I’m trying to reprogram the device to let everyone down gently, but it’s not being very cooperative.”

  “Why should this one be any easier to deal with than the first five?” said the dark-haired man. “My favorite so far was number three, the heat-seeking, flying buzzsaw.”

  “We’re just lucky no one’s been killed yet,” said the black-haired woman. “That buzzsaw came pretty close to lopping your head off, Fabian.”

  “For such a one-track-minded bunch of sourpusses, the Dominion sure get creative with their booby traps,” said Fabian, the dark-haired man.

  “I’ll try to warn you next time the…hiccup!” said Soloman.

  Suddenly, Ven-Sa and Chi-Sa dropped three more meters, then shot straight up again. Chi-Sa’s climb stopped when he slammed into the ceiling of the side chamber. Em-Lin heard a loud crack, and Chi-Sa howled in pain.

  Ven-Sa stopped when he hit the ceiling, too, but his ceiling was four stories up, at the highest point of the shrine. He was pinned there, looking straight down, his back stuck against the very mural that Em-Lin had been in the process of restoring when all this began.

  In other words, when Or-Lin died.

  As if the mere thought of Or-Lin had been enough to conjure her from the dead, Em-Lin heard her voice in her right ear at that moment. It sounded as clear as day, as clear as it had every time her dead twin sister had spoken to her since the explosion.

  Let go, said Or-Lin’s voice. I love you and I will protect you.

  Em-Lin shivered and held on more tightly to the statue of Yolo. She knew that her dead twin’s advice was no good. She knew further that the Or-Lin who kept appearing to her, speaking to her, and touching her—but never two of those at the same time—was a dugo tenya, or trauma-induced hallucination.

  Still, the voice unhinged her. As much as she knew intellectually that it belonged to a phantom, she could not quell her emotional response of intense, unreasoning fear.

  And longing. Longing to reunite with the one whom she had lost.

  More accurately, the half of herself that she had lost.

  Please let go, said Or-Lin. I love you and I miss you.

  “I miss you, too,” whispered Em-Lin, but she did not release her hold on the statue.

  Fortunately, then, she was distracted by the voices of the others in the shrine. The living others.

  “How much time till the device deactivates?” said the black-haired woman clinging to the pillar.

  “Thirty seconds,” said Soloman. Em-Lin noticed that in spite of the stress that he must be under, his voice remained calm and matter-of-fact. “But I have an idea. I’m going to try a different approach.”

  “Please make it a quick one!” Ven-Sa shouted from the distant ceiling of the chamber.

  “This circuitry is morphic,” said Soloman, “and so is the programming. It continually changes to circumvent attempted disruptions.” His fingers danced so fast across the flickering panel that Em-Lin could not follow their movements. “I need to insert my own changeling applet and fool the system into thinking the new program is from the same parent as itself.”

  “You can do that?” said Chi-Sa.

  “Either I can,” said Soloman, “or I can’t.”

  “He can,” said Fabian. “You better believe he can.”

  Soloman’s fingers continued to fly. “Wait!” he said, leaning closer to the open panel. “I was in a sandbox the whole time!”

  “Sandbox?” said Chi-Sa.

  “A subsystem partitioned from the main program,” said Soloman. “Firewalled all around and completely nonfunctional…but I’m tunneling through to the real system, and…everybody hold on tight!”

  “Hold on to what?” said Ven-Sa, his voice high and wild with panic.

  Em-Lin felt herself grow slightly heavier. Far above, Ven-Sa slowly fell away from the ceiling and drifted downward as if he barely weighed more than the air around him.

  “It’s working!” said Chi-Sa, also floating down from his high perch.

  “I told you he could do it,” said Fabian.

  “Great job, Soloman,” said the black-haired woman.

  “Actually, Commander Gomez,” said Soloman, “I have some bad news.”

  “What is it?” said Gomez.

  “I seem to have triggered some kind of failsafe,” said Soloman. He turned, and Em-Lin realized for the first time that the blue, multilegged shape underneath him had a face. “Once this applet has run its course, I believe that all the remaining booby traps in and around the shrine of Ho’nig will activate at the same time.”

  “This ought to make life interesting,” said Fabian.

  “To say the least,” said the blue creature under Soloman. Its voice was high and bright and echoed through the shrine like tinkling bells rung by Pika priests during a holy ceremony.

  “Vance,” said Gomez. “Call in Soan. In fact, bring in your whole team. Miradorn security will have to maintain the perimeter.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Vance, the dark-skinned man on the stone railing.

  “Everybody stay sharp,” said Gomez. “All hell is about to break loose.”

  “Again,” said Fabian.

  “I hope you won’t mind if I excuse myself,” said Ven-Sa, who was midway to the floor by now. “I just remembered, I have an important appointment in a few minutes.”

  “Coincidentally,” said Chi-Sa, “so do I.”

  Chapter

  6

  “Here we are,” Brag-Ret said calmly, though he had just raced the hovercar at top speed in a heart-stop-ping slalom through the city and slammed it into a parking dock so hard that Carol just knew she had thrown her back out. “Let’s see how the children at this school celebrate Federation Day!”

  Carol looked at Corsi, who rolled her eyes. They both knew that it was no accident that their visit to New Mirada happened to coincide with the first annual Federation Day. In fact, Carol would not have been surprised to learn that it was Federation Day every time a Federation official dropped by New Mirada.

  Sog-Ret burst from the hovercar and dragged Rennan out after her by the elbow. “Let’s go, guys!” she said. “We only have fifteen riglis till we have to be back across town again!”

  Carol slumped in her seat and watched miserably as Brag-Ret hustled Corsi out onto the moving walkway. She felt like a child herself, being hurried between tour
ist attractions on vacation by overzealous parents.

  Truly, Brag-Ret and Sog-Ret brought new meaning to the term “overscheduling.” In the two hours since beaming to the surface, Carol, Corsi, and Rennan had been propelled on a nonstop tour of the capital city of New Mirada, a capital that the Miradorn had renamed “Federation City” since the end of the Dominion War.

  Already, in just two hours, the away team had visited three grade schools, two retirement homes, two hospitals, and a shopping complex, never spending more than fifteen minutes at each one. Though no one but Brag-Ret and Sog-Ret had access to the actual schedule, Carol got the impression, from hints that her guides had dropped, that the rest of the day would be at least as jam-packed as the first half had been.

  And about as helpful, no doubt. Carol had seen quite enough staged imaging opportunities for one planet, thank you very much. The only thing she learned from all the pep rallies and key-to-the-city/student artwork/home-baked pastry presentations was that the New Mirada chamber of commerce was trying way too hard to make an impression.

  Plus which, all the high-speed hoopla made her wonder what exactly the Miradorn didn’t want her to see. The thicker they laid it on, the more suspicious she became.

  Case in point. “Oh my!” said Brag-Ret, gasping as he helped her from the hovercar. “The sunlight serves to enhance your beauty even more. I would not have thought it possible, but your loveliness grows with each passing moment.”

  Carol thanked him dutifully as the moving walkway carried her into the building. Yes, she realized, it was possible to hear how beautiful she was too many times in a single day. She resolved never to share this intelligence with Vance Hawkins.

  As the ruckus of excited Miradorn children reached her from the open double doors up ahead, Carol made a decision. The way things were going would have been absolutely fine if she were on a simple goodwill tour, but her assignment was to dig in and assess the true state of mind of the Miradorn people vis-à-vis the Federation. She wouldn’t be doing that if she kept glad-handing and small-talking for the rest of her visit.

  Clearly, it was time to revise the itinerary.

  When the walkway had deposited her in the noisy auditorium, Carol strolled past Sog-Ret to stand alongside Corsi.

  “Hey, Domenica,” said Carol, whispering in Corsi’s ear. “I’ve got an idea.”

  “Me, too,” said Corsi, glaring at the mob of young Miradorn children fidgeting and jabbering in the rows of seats before them. “Does yours involve settling these kids down with a wide beam phaser set on stun?”

  “My idea is more along the lines of making a run for it,” said Carol.

  “That works, too,” said Corsi.

  Rennan, who was standing on the other side of Corsi, leaned in with a grin. “Count me in.”

  Carol sighed. “Why do we bother whispering with a Betazoid around?”

  “Who said we were going to invite you?” Corsi said sternly.

  “You need my superior fighting skills,” said Rennan.

  Corsi snorted. “I dare you to read my mind right this minute.”

  Rennan stared at her for a moment, then grimaced. “Now that’s harassment, Lieutenant Commander.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Corsi, and then she turned back to Carol. “So when do you want to run for it?”

  “Good question.” Carol looked around the auditorium. She saw Brag-Ret and Sog-Ret standing near the door, talking to a woman in a businesslike navy blue outfit who looked like she might be a school official. “I say there’s no time like the present.”

  “So how do we make this happen?” said Rennan.

  “Leave that to me,” Corsi said with a nod. “Stay here until you get the signal. Then make a run for the hovercar.”

  With that, Corsi walked over to the school official and asked a question. Smiling, the official answered, after which Corsi nodded and marched out the door.

  “I wonder what she said?” said Carol.

  “She asked for directions to the ladies’ room,” Rennan said with a smirk.

  Three minutes later, just as the school official had introduced Carol and Rennan, and the children were stomping their feet in applause, a piercing whine blasted through the auditorium.

  All at once, every child in the room got up and marched in an orderly fashion for the exits positioned in the middle of each of the four walls. The adults, including the school official, observed the evacuation and shouted occasional instructions to the children.

  Rennan elbowed Carol’s arm. “I’d say this must be our signal.”

  “Good guess,” said Carol, and then the two of them darted out the nearest door. They made it out just ahead of a double-file formation of Miradorn children.

  Brag-Ret and Sog-Ret were not so lucky. Though not far behind Carol and Rennan, the bombastic, bearded twins were stuck in the auditorium, hemmed in by columns of children.

  Once out in the hallway, Carol and Rennan broke into a run. When they got to the dock, they found Corsi behind the wheel of the hovercar, revving the engine.

  “Nice work,” said Carol as she jumped in beside Corsi. “You really know how to stage a diversion.”

  “Nothing like a good, old-fashioned fire drill,” said Corsi, whipping the hovercar away from the dock the second Rennan’s posterior hit the backseat. “Provided you can find the right switch to pull.”

  Chapter

  7

  Just as Soloman leaped away from the altar in the shrine of Ho’nig, sixteen beams of destructive white energy punched down from the circle of sixteen columns and pulverized the altar into a swirling cloud of dust.

  Vance raced toward Soloman, dodging a flying grenade and a shower of sparks along the way, only to be stopped in midstep by an arm that broke off a bejeweled statue and slammed into his chest. Vance went over backward, collapsing to the stone floor with a jarring impact. It was just as well, as it turned out. As he lay there, looking up, a sheet of bright green energy slid across the space above him, crackling as it lopped off the backs of pews and the top half of a statue of a pious-looking Brikar.

  Just before the statue’s head and shoulders dropped, Vance threw off the stone arm that had knocked him down and hastily rolled out of the way. A heartbeat later, the top of the Brikar crashed onto the spot that Vance’s lower body had just occupied, breaking into chunks of rubble and sending up a puff of dust.

  It was his ninth or tenth superclose call in the five minutes since the Dominion failsafe had triggered every remaining booby trap in the shrine at once. At the rate he was going, Vance thought it was pretty unlikely that he would walk out of the shrine alive, especially given the fact that he had used up all of his nine lives on S.C.E. missions long ago.

  Somewhere in the middle of the mayhem, Commander Gomez was shouting orders, trying to coordinate the team’s efforts to deflect and deactivate the multiple threats. So far, Vance had been having enough trouble just dodging deathtraps to be much help disabling them.

  “Soloman?” said Gomez. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, Commander,” Soloman said from not far away, “but the altar access terminal has been destroyed.”

  “Then go help Pattie at the west wall terminal,” said Gomez. “See if you can implement a flash-purge from there.”

  “On my way, Commander,” said Soloman.

  “And be careful!” said Gomez.

  “Understood,” said Soloman. Watching from the floor, Vance could see the dim outline of the Bynar hurrying past through the drifting clouds of smoke.

  Vance sat up and smacked the combadge on his chest. “Lauoc!” he said. “Report!”

  “So far, so bad,” Lauoc said over the combadge, shouting over the deafening whines of nearby weapons fire. “Kim and T’Mandra are pinned down. I made it to an access panel, but this morph tech is giving me the granddaddy of all headaches. Every time I think I’ve disabled something, the morphic system reconfigures to work around what I did.”

  “Wha
t’s your location?” said Vance, cautiously getting to his feet.

  “I’m at an access point in the back wall,” said Lauoc, “trying to shut down a heat-seeking missile launcher…no, wait. It’s reconfiguring again.” As noisy as the place was, Lauoc’s disgusted curse came in loud and clear over the combadge. “Now it’s a quantum bomb set to go off in…three minutes. It’s big enough to bring down the shrine and the entire city sector around it.”

  Vance was moving before Lauoc’s last word, charging toward the back wall of the shrine. As he ran, he heard projectiles whistling and the beams of energy weapons wailing around him, but he did not slow down or look around. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted something big swinging toward him, and he kicked up his pace enough to get out of the way just in time.

  A second later, he heard a woman scream behind him, and he whipped around. By the light of an overhead explosion, Vance saw a white-haired woman pinned to the wall between the prongs of what looked like the head of a giant pitchfork. From a distance, Vance could not tell if the prongs had pierced the woman’s body.

  Even as the countdown in his head ticked away the seconds until the quantum bomb would go off, Vance ran toward the woman instead of Lauoc. As he got closer, the first thing he noticed was that one of the prongs had indeed drawn blood from the woman’s side.

  The second thing he noticed was that the woman was a Miradorn. The pearlescent skin and sharp peak of hair drawn all the way down to a spot between her eyebrows were dead giveaways.

  Vance charged up to the woman and immediately grabbed hold of the fork. He pulled back on it with all his strength, but it would not budge.

  The woman gasped in pain, and her eyes shot wide open. For the first time, Vance got a clear look at them.

  Even in the midst of the crisis, he was struck by how strange and beautiful they were. Except for the irises, the eyes were black, flecked with gold glitter; the irises themselves were glowing white rings suspended in the darkness.