The Cleanup

by Robert T. Jeschonek

  As Vinx carried the king across the room and lowered him onto a throne, Tev snorted, trying to clear the scent of death from his sensitive Tellarite nostrils. Between the mayhem in the streets and the overabundance of dead in the halls of the palace itself, Tev had inhaled far too much of that terrible scent for one day.

  Scanning the room with his tricorder, he found the changeling signal that he had been following. From orbit, Ensign Haznedl at ops had located three possible sources of the signal. After beaming to the other two sites, Tev had finally found the location of the Dominion transmitter on New Mirada, the ironic “twin” of the device on the moon of Zasharu.

  Now that he had found it, Tev thought that he should have guessed the correct site in the first place. As on Zasharu, the transmitter had been hidden under a long-standing locus of power—political this time instead of spiritual. As the shrine and the royal palace were not likely to be disturbed by demolition or new construction, both sites were quite safe for secret underground installations. Tev really should have known.

  Not that he would ever admit that to anyone for as long as he lived.

  “The Dominion transmitter is directly beneath this room,” said Tev, continuing to watch the readouts on his tricorder. “I am literally standing on top of it.”

  “’Scuse me,” said Vinx. “This other bigwig over here’s about to kick the bucket.”

  “The only way we can help him is by rendering the transmitter inoperative,” said Tev. “Assuming we can get to it, of course.”

  “There’s a problem?” said Bart Faulwell, who was examining an intricate, sculpted emblem like a coat of arms on the wall behind the thrones.

  “As on Zasharu, the underground transmitter chamber is heavily shielded,” said Tev. “It is also protected by a plethora of Jem’Hadar booby traps.”

  “And here we are without a changeling multitool or an expert on Dominion technology,” said Faulwell. “And more Miradorn are dying every minute.”

  Tev paced the floor of the throne room and thought for a moment. One solution came to mind, but it relied on the use of experimental technology. Given more time, he would prefer a traditional approach to the situation, one involving tested and more predictable techniques, but time was in short supply. The Miradorn crisis was quickly becoming an extinction-level event.

  Tev needed to do what was necessary to end this disaster as fast as possible. He needed to take a chance on his unproven creation and hope for the best.

  He touched his combadge. “Tev to da Vinci,” he said. “There’s an equipment case labeled UNCERTAINTY on a rack in my quarters. Please retrieve that case and beam it down to me immediately.”

  Chapter

  22

  “So what Em-Lin’s saying is,” said Fabian, “we don’t stand a ghost of a chance of stopping the changeling transmitter without her dead sister’s help.”

  Vance winced at the pun. “Not in so many words, but yeah.” He looked around at his teammates, who had gathered to discuss the offer of help that Em-Lin—and Or-Lin—had made to him.

  “The question is, can she deliver the goods?” said Fabian.

  “The part about her sister,” said Gomez, looking directly at Lense. “Could there be any truth to it?”

  Lense glanced over her shoulder to be sure that Em-Lin was still out of earshot, resting against a wall on the far side of the chamber. “It’s possible,” she said when she turned back to the group. “Em-Lin herself might possess the full knowledge, and she prolongs the fantasy that Or-Lin has survived by claiming to channel the knowledge from her.”

  Vance shook his head. “I’ve spent time with Em-Lin,” he said. “If the dead sister is nothing but a fantasy, she must be one hell of a fantasy.”

  “I tend to agree,” said Lense. “There might be something at work here that isn’t under Em-Lin’s control.”

  “Then whose control is it under?” said Fabian.

  “Its own, maybe,” said Lense. “Instead of a vivid fantasy or memory construct, it could be similar to the Vulcan katra passed on before death—a copy of a person’s consciousness imprinted on a host’s brain. Em-Lin might be dealing with a lingering remnant of Or-Lin’s mind, one with access to all of Or-Lin’s specialized knowledge and skills.”

  “In which case, Em-Lin’s making her offer in good faith,” said Gomez. “The dead sister’s consciousness really would be helping her work on the transmitter.”

  “How wonderful,” said Soloman. “To have a departed companion continue to guide you after death.”

  Although Vance knew that Soloman would have loved to still hear the thoughts of his deceased bond-mate 111—he had gone to extreme lengths just to talk to an alternate-universe version of her not too long ago—he knew there was no joy in this. “I bet Em-Lin wouldn’t agree, and that worries me. As badly shaken up as Em-Lin has been, I don’t think Or-Lin’s been treating her very well lately.”

  “That suggests another possibility to explain Or-Lin’s influence,” said Lense. “What if Or-Lin is a katra or a fantasy or some other kind of echo of consciousness, and she’s been twisted by the effects of the Dominion transmitter? Who knows what her real intentions might be?”

  “Sounds like just the kind of ghost we don’t want anywhere near that transmitter,” said Fabian.

  “Or-Lin’s presence has definitely gotten stronger since we came down here.” Vance looked up at the huge yellow-tinted tank as it continued to turn, the protoplasmic clumps melding and dividing and spinning in the fluid inside it. “Em-Lin went from zoning out periodically to zoning out all the time. After a while, I had a hell of a time just getting through to her. Even then, I had to talk to Or-Lin first.”

  “She didn’t answer you, did she?” said Fabian.

  “Not directly,” said Vance.

  “That you know of,” said Soloman. “What if Or-Lin has taken over?”

  Vance looked across the chamber at Em-Lin, and he felt uneasy. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “All right,” said Gomez, raising her voice just enough to command her teammates’ full attention. “We could speculate all day about this, but people are dying every minute we stand here and talk. The bottom line is, do we need Em-Lin’s help?”

  “As I said earlier, this system is far more robust than the Dominion systems we encountered in the shrine.” A flicker of annoyance crossed Soloman’s features. “I have attempted to apply a variation of the morphic virus that I used on the booby traps, but without success.”

  “This is some kind of hyper-changeling tech down here,” said Fabian. “It’s so good at staying a step ahead of us, I’ve been wondering if it can see the future.”

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’ ” said Gomez. “We need her. Let’s take her up on her offer.”

  “And hope the dead sister isn’t thinking some dead Starfleeters might be fun to hang around with,” said Fabian.

  “We’ll watch her carefully,” said Gomez.

  “I do not know if we could tell if she does anything wrong,” said Soloman.

  “My invisible friend isn’t sure he can keep the invisible ghost in line, either,” said Fabian.

  “We’ll just have to do our best,” said Gomez. “Vance, please tell Em-Lin that we accept her and her sister’s offer. We’d like them to start working on the transmitter immediately.”

  Vance turned in Em-Lin’s direction. “Yes, sir,” he said, feeling sorry for Em-Lin and at the same time worried that she might destroy him and his shipmates when she got her hands on the Dominion device.

  And at the same time as all of that, he felt something that he had never expected to feel for a Miradorn after that terrible day on Jomej VII.

  The concern of one friend for another.

  Chapter

  23

  “Just keep that thing away from me,” said Bart, taking a step back from the polished, milky-white sphere in Tev’s hands. “I can’t believe you built something based on a device that actually killed me once!”


  Tev scrolled a fingertip over the surface of the bowling-ball-sized sphere, adjusting the fluidic controls sandwiched between the layers of the device’s smooth skin. “You have nothing to worry about, Bartholomew,” he said, though he wasn’t entirely sure that was true. “The Luck Pulse generates a limited and precisely calibrated probability effect.”

  “Which has never been tested in the field,” said Bart.

  Tev shrugged. “A technicality.”

  “And it’s never been tested in the lab, either,” said Bart.

  “But the holosimulations have had impressive results,” said Tev. That much, at least, was true, though holosimulations were of course a completely different animal from real-world builds.

  “So help me, Tev,” said Bart, pacing nervously back and forth. “If that thing kills me like the other one did, I will haunt you for all eternity.”

  Tev nodded and continued adjusting the sphere’s controls. He understood Bart’s reaction, given the source of the tech that had gone into the new device.

  Tev had based the Luck Pulse on elements of the Uncertainty Drive, a probability-warping propulsion system found onboard an ancient derelict starship called the Minstrel’s Whisper. The malfunctioning Uncertainty Drive had deluged the crew of the da Vinci with distorted luck, one aspect of which was the death of Bart Faulwell. Bart had been returned to life after Soloman convinced the drive to deactivate, but it was natural that he would be apprehensive about a device with similar properties.

  “Seriously, Tev,” said Bart. “Remember how unpredictable the Uncertainty Drive was.”

  “Because its systems had degraded over millions of years,” said Tev. “And keep in mind, the drive was a lot more complicated than the Luck Pulse. The simpler the system, the less prone it is to breakdown.”

  “Yeah, but remember the part about how it killed me?” Bart shook his head. “I mean, the drive did. The drive killed me.”

  Tev got along well with Bartholomew and took no pleasure in making him uncomfortable, but it was time to take action. “If this works, we could knock out the booby traps all at once.” Tev made a final adjustment to the sphere’s fluidic controls and cradled it in his hands. “Frankly, if I did not think it would work, I would not waste my valuable time trying it. Similarly, if I thought it was likely to do you harm, I would not have this device anywhere near you.”

  Bart did not seem to be convinced of the Luck Pulse’s harmlessness. Halfheartedly, he smiled and raised a shaky thumbs-up gesture. “All right then,” he said, backing away from Tev and the device. “Good luck with that.”

  Tev pressed the red activation whorl on the skin of the sphere. In ten seconds, the device was set to emit a pulse lasting thirty seconds, after which it would automatically deactivate.

  If, of course, the device’s probability-altering field did not create a malfunction in its own timing mechanism. That was one of the factors that Tev still wasn’t a hundred percent sure about yet.

  He drew the sphere back and up with one hand. Then he took three steps, swinging the sphere forward, and released it to roll across the floor of the palace throne room.

  Tev hurried out of the huge chamber, from which everyone else had already been evacuated. Just as he turned to watch from the other side of the doorway, the Luck Pulse sphere flared with blinding white light.

  Within seconds, deadly-looking Jem’Hadar booby traps began falling from hiding places in the walls and ceiling, clattering to the floor without firing a single projectile or energy beam or explosive. The thrones themselves fell to pieces, both at the same time, revealing hidden gun emplacements that sparked and smoked and burst apart with loud pops.

  Tev felt a surge of satisfaction as he looked back and forth between the readouts on his tricorder and the visible effects in the throne room. “It’s working,” he said. “The booby traps are spontaneously self-destructing.”

  “Now that’s the way to do a job,” said Vinx. “You never gotta get your hands dirty.”

  Just then, with ten seconds remaining on the duration of the Luck Pulse, an unexpected movement in the throne room caught Tev’s eye. Peering into the dim far corners of the room, he glimpsed a dark figure ducking behind a fat pillar. He continued to watch closely.

  The next thing he knew, he was stumbling backward, heart racing, as a fierce-looking creature leaped out from behind the pillar. Tev saw black fur, a long snout, and a foaming muzzle packed with jagged, gleaming fangs.

  The creature was bipedal and stood at least twice as tall as Tev. As it scanned the chamber with bulging, bloodshot eyes, Tev recognized its similarity to certain canine species native to Earth. Its features were exaggerated and unnatural, but it resembled a Terran animal that Tev had seen images of in the past.

  Specifically, it looked like a wolf.

  When the creature caught sight of Tev, it charged straight for him. Terrified, Tev tripped over his own feet as he tried to run and fell to the floor. The creature continued to charge.

  That was when the entire royal palace collapsed. As debris blasted down from above, crushing the creature in mid-lunge, the Luck Pulse sphere stopped glowing, its thirty seconds of operation finally expiring.

  Chapter

  24

  “I’m pleased to report that thanks to my admittedly unorthodox solution, all booby traps installed in the royal palace have been eliminated,” Tev said over Gomez’s combadge. “Also, a hole has spontaneously opened into the underground transmitter chamber, so we do not have to cut through the shielding.”

  Gomez frowned. Since contacting Tev a moment ago for a status report, she had been getting a suspicious vibe. Though his report was glowing, she wondered about the actual state of affairs on his end of the call. “What’s that I hear in the background? Some kind of crumbling sound?”

  “It’s just dust settling,” said Tev. “Some…shifting…occurred during the deactivation process.”

  “Shifting.” Gomez no longer had any doubt that Tev was glossing over the truth. She did not, however, have time to explore the subject further. “I’m glad your ‘unorthodox solution,’ whatever it was, proved to be so effective.”

  “Thank you,” said Tev. “However, I cannot, at this time, recommend using the Luck Pulse on the changeling transmitter.”

  “The what pulse?” said Gomez. Conveniently, Tev had left out the minor detail that he had used something called a Luck Pulse to deactivate the booby traps.

  “The unpredictability factor associated with the Pulse’s effects is much higher than I had originally anticipated,” said Tev. “There is simply too much uncertainty involved.”

  The mention of the word “uncertainty” got Gomez’s attention, reminding her of another device that dispensed its own brand of luck, but she received another call over her combadge and could not pursue the questioning further.

  “I’ll get back to you,” she told Tev, and then she touched the combadge to switch to the second call.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Whatever you’re planning to do, Gomez, do it now,” said Captain David Gold over the combadge link. “The situation is deteriorating fast.”

  “How could it get any worse?” said Fabian, listening in as he and Vance led Em-Lin to the transmitter’s control console.

  “The progress of the syndrome has accelerated,” said Gold, “both on New Mirada and Zasharu. The death rate is skyrocketing.”

  “How long do we have?” said Gomez.

  “If the death toll continues to climb at its current rate,” said Gold, “the Miradorn species will be nearly extinct within two hours.”

  Gomez watched Em-Lin settle into a chair at the console. Em-Lin’s lips were moving, but she clearly wasn’t speaking to Vance or Fabian. Her eyes were fixed on the empty space to her right.

  Gomez was not exactly overflowing with confidence that the fate of an entire species rested in the hands of a woman who did most of her talking to someone who existed only in her head.

  “We’re taking steps, sir,�
� said Gomez. “Our Miradorn guide claims to have specific and detailed knowledge of this particular device.”

  “Then I won’t keep you any longer,” said Gold. His voice was tight. “Good luck, Gomez.”

  “Thank you, sir. Gomez out.” As the connection severed, Gomez closed her eyes for a moment and cradled her face in her hands.

  A sentient species was on the verge of depopulation so sweeping that it might as well be called extinction. The Miradorn who were left when it was all over, a relative handful of nontwins who did not contract Overlobe Syndrome, would be so few that the task of repopulating their species would take ages.

  And everything was riding on one woman with an attitude problem and her personal ghost.

  At the touch of a hand on her shoulder, Gomez looked up and to the left. Lense looked back at her, a grim expression etched onto her features.

  More bad news, thought Gomez, and she was right…not that it was much of a deductive leap given the way things were going.

  “Boz-Nu just died,” said Lense.

  Gomez sighed. “They’re going fast,” she said. “Pretty harsh treatment if you ask me, especially since the Miradorn never crossed the Dominion.”

  “Scorched earth, maybe?” said Lense. “Leave nothing and no one that could benefit your enemies?”

  Gomez shrugged. “Maybe it’s just another case of revenge against the Solids.”

  “Complete with poetic justice,” said Lense. “Twin devices use the Miradorn twins’ own linking abilities against them.”

  “To kill them,” said Gomez.

  “No.” Em-Lin spoke up suddenly from her seat at the control panel several meters away. Gomez and Lense both looked in her direction. “That’s not what this device was meant to do.”

  Neither Gomez nor Lense had been speaking loudly. Gomez was surprised that Em-Lin had overheard any of their conversation from so far away. Maybe the ghost was closer to us than Em-Lin, she thought.