by Ilsa J. Bick
“No,” Soloman lied. “I did not.”
Chapter
4
On red alert, the light crimson as blood, their alarm klaxons screaming, they slammed to port and let gravity work for them. The ship spun so quickly that Bajor flashed by in a swirl of blue ocean and white clouds, and then they were roaring past the station, picking up speed, hammering on full impulse, trying to get enough distance to go to warp. A risky thing and some kind of crappy odds, pushing the Gettysburg nose-first toward Bajor and then angling off, using gravity as a slingshot to hurl them out of high orbit and past the station, but the ship was getting pretty banged up, and Captain David Gold was outnumbered: a Keldon-class warship and two Hideki-29 class ships on their tail. But if he was lucky, Bajor’s gravity well would snatch at those bursts of disruptor fire, and they might just pull off this cockamamie heist.
But then McAllan shouted a warning and Gold spun in his command chair; saw the Keldon-class warship coming for them on an intercept course, right between the eyes. His stomach bottomed out. “Helm, evasive maneuvers! Keep our aft shields to them!”
“Trying, Captain!” Wong’s teeth were set, and the cords of his neck bulged as if he could move the stubborn ship by wishing it so. “That last disruptor hit tagged our starboard maneuvering thrusters; they’re really slow, and she’s sluggish on the turn, I can’t—”
Gold cut him off with a savage cut of his hand. “McAllan, what about my torpedoes?”
“Torpedoes still offline, sir!” At tactical, immediately behind Gold’s command chair, McAllan’s square features were set in intense concentration, his fingers flying over his weapons console. “Working to restore, but I’ve got phasers back!”
“Then what the hell are you waiting for, an invitation? Fire phasers!” Gold bellowed. He turned back just in time to see an emerald-green glitter, and then he was out of his chair. “Wong! Hard to port, hard—”
A series of disruptor salvoes burst over the ship’s hull. The impacts were like being punched broadside in rapid fire. The Gettysburg bucked, shimmied; Gold felt the deck jitter, and he would’ve fallen if his XO hadn’t snagged him.
“Damage report, Lieutenant McAllan,” said his XO.
“Hull breach on decks twenty through twenty-five, Commander. Starboard shields are forty percent and our inertial dampers will not survive another salvo.”
“Starboard maneuvering thrusters are out, Captain,” said Wong.
A hail sliced the air. “Captain, this is Gomez. We’ve got a plasma leak. I’m going to have to vent her if you want to get out of here in one piece. But you’ve got to move us to a more stable region of space. All that weapons fire out there, it’ll touch off that plasma like—”
“Incoming message,” McAllan broke in. “Terok Nor, Captain.”
“Let him cool his thrusters,” said Gold. “Gomez, prepare to vent on my mark, you got that?” Then, to McAllan: “When I give the word, you touch off phasers.”
“Phasers, sir? But with the plasma…” Then McAllan’s face brightened. “Roger that, sir.”
“Attaboy.” Gold looked at Wong. “You clear?”
Wong was already busy inputting coordinates. “Crystal. Just give the word.”
“Count on it.” Gold nodded, tugged on his uniform shirt, and turned toward the viewscreen. “Onscreen.”
The viewscreen shimmered; a face blurred, then coalesced into features Gold recognized. “What do you want, Garak?”
“Why, Captain Gold.” Gul Garak’s oily tenor undulated from the speakers. “You astound me. Isn’t it obvious? You stole something, naughty you, and now I’d like it back. You do that and I’d be ecstatic to order my ships to stand down.”
“So generous. Let me guess: In exchange for your magnanimity, I presume I’ll be your guest and will be…convinced, in the most subtle ways you can devise, to hand over the precise location of all of Starfleet’s forces in this sector, right?”
“Not only a brave captain but a mind reader, as well. Ah, Gold, you are a treasure. You never fail to astound me. Not as cultured as Picard by any means, may he rest in peace, but still very charming in your way.”
“I notice that your high esteem for Picard didn’t exactly translate into any unwillingness to execute him.”
“You wound me.” Garak placed both hands over his left breast. “When it was over, I was stricken for at least an hour. Picard was such an interesting conversation-alist, too. So bookish. Not nearly the boor Dukat was—and, oh my, such language! That man did have a mouth. Assassinating Dukat was a matter of self-preservation, I assure you.”
“No doubt. I hear Dukat was pretty well off, too.”
“Yes, indeed. You may rest easy that his fortune was divided fairly among his various friends. And his command, well, let us just say that I feel the weight of my responsibilities here on Terok Nor. Fortunately, Dukat’s very own, very special comfort woman is quite…well…honestly, I blush.”
“Spare me the details. I can’t imagine the Bajorans being anything but hospitable and oh-so-comforting to their paid thugs.”
“Captain, you cut me to the quick. You know very well that we are here at the invitation of the Bajorans. It is you who trespass. But, oh, bother the details. Let’s bury the hatchet, shall we? Why don’t you stand down and beam on over to Terok Nor? We’ll chat over a nice snifter of Lakatian brandy: an excellent vintage, astounding nose, and the finish! To die for.”
“In the words of an exceedingly bright engineer…up your shaft, Garak.”
“Such a consummate wit. Captain Gold, I shall very much regret killing you. It will pain me, truly.”
“Not half as much as this will,” said Gold. He turned to McAllan. “Now.”
On cue, McAllan cut the channel; Garak’s face winked out; and Gold whirled on his heel. “Wong, show these bastards our sweet pink asses! McAllan, aft shields; give them all you’ve got! Gomez!”
“On it, sir! Venting now…done!”
“Fire phasers! Wong, warp three, now!”
Suddenly, the space around the Keldon flashed as McAllan touched off phasers into a swirl of vented plasma. The plasma pillowed into a mushrooming orange-red cloud; the Keldon and Hidekis disappeared in the fiery slurry of ignited plasma and gas, and the glare was so bright Gold blinked, looked away. In the same instant, Wong whirled the ship to starboard and the Gettysburg shot into warp.
“Are they away?” From his office in Terok Nor, Gul Elim Garak watched space ignite. His predominant emotion was a grudging sort of admiration. “Zotat, are they away?”
“They’re gone.” Zotat’s reply sputtered amid pops of ionization static. “Shall we give chase?”
“No, no.” Garak raised a finger in admonishment. “Let the brave captain and his crew go. We’ll be meeting them again, very soon. Take up your stations at your prearranged coordinates and signal the other vessels to do likewise. I will notify you when it is time. Garak out.”
In the silence that followed, Garak raised a snifter of very old, very fine Lakatian brandy to his visitor in the chair opposite. “A toast.”
“Indeed.” The Androssi overseer was male and slim with a skin tone that was more gray than yellow. Unlike many of his kind, his face was clean-shaven, but his hair was a lush mane that stretched beyond his waist in a darkly amber cascade that he wore loose—again, not like others of his kind. His right and left nostrils bristled with an array of five nose rings that bespoke his position. “Isn’t celebration a bit premature?”
“What, you doubt the abilities of the Bynars?”
“What I doubt is that the Bynars have the necessary skills to utilize the device to our advantage. That would be…unfortunate.”
“But not irreparable. And if the Bynars succeed!” Garak flashed a grin that was all teeth. “Think of what we shall deliver to the Bajoran Assembly in a mere twenty hours. A treaty and their gods: Not even the religious caste can argue with that. I drink to your health, Overseer—and to David Gold, noble captain, patron sa
int of lost causes.”
Garak tipped his snifter to his mouth. The nut-flavored liquor was smooth and warmed a track to his belly. Garak released a sigh of pure contentment. “Who says religion and politics don’t mix?”
Still blinking away stars, Gold thumbed a tear from his left cheek. His eyes stung. “Pursuit?”
McAllan studied his boards, then shook his head. “They’re not after us.”
“Good. Stand down from red alert. Tell Gomez to get on that plasma leak. Wong, how long to rendezvous?”
“Three hours, forty-seven minutes, sir.”
“Very well.” Gold nodded at his communications officer. “Haznedl, get a message to Kira. Tell her we’ll be at the rendezvous point in four hours.”
“That ruse will only work once, Captain,” said Gold’s XO. He was about as nonplussed as Gold had ever seen him: sweating so much that the man’s black hair gleamed like a skullcap. “Garak will not make the same mistake again.”
“I’m kinda amazed he made it the first time. Garak doesn’t make mistakes.”
He was cut off by the shrill of a hail. “Bridge, this is sickbay.” An eerie, high-pitched wail on the channel, and then the sound suddenly grew distanced and muffled, as if the person had been moved into another room. “You’ve got to get down here right now.”
“Sickbay?” Gold’s XO arched an eyebrow, his left. “How many casualties, Dr. Kane?”
A snort. “Enough to keep me busy, that’s for sure. But that’s not why I’m calling. Captain Gold, it’s the Bynars.”
Gold groaned. “Oh, no.” Damn, that would be perfect; just perfect. We go through all this and then the damn Bynars can’t even commune with the thing…“Are they hurt?”
“We don’t know.” Another voice: female, taut with urgency. “The Bynars were communing with that device…and now 110’s unresponsive.”
“Unresponsive?”
“Like in a coma, sir,” said Kane.
“What?” Gold and his XO exchanged glances. “Dax, what happened?” asked Gold.
“I don’t know,” said Dax. “But we’ve got to figure this out, and fast. The Bynars are the key to finding the wormhole, I’m sure of it. Only…”
“What?”
“Well, 111 says there was somebody there, in the datastream. Captain, she’s totally hysterical. She says the Bynar’s a singleton, and he’s got a name.”
“Not a designation?” said the XO.
“No, a name; 111 said he was very specific. Only she’s so upset, I can’t make sense of what she’s saying. But without the Bynars, Captain…it’s over.”
This was true. There was dead silence as Gold and his XO looked at one another. Then Commander Salek said, “Actually, I believe the expression is…we’re shtuped.”
Chapter
5
He drifted the way one did in the cold vacuum of space. Soloman’s first EVA had been over Byanus, and he remembered the moment he and 111 stepped from the lip of the ship. Everyone said that the first time, they expected to fall. But 110 and 111 did not; 110 recalled that the sight of their world—steel-gray oceans and dusky landmasses glimmering with yellow lozenges of light—made their heads balloon. They were at once very small and quite huge, and the feeling was so expansive they could describe it as nothing short of ecstasy.
And yet there was this now, this second chance, and it was almost more than Soloman could bear. There was no describing it, really, but it reminded him a bit of the moment immediately after stepping out into space, expecting to fall and yet not. He hovered, watching the blaze of information passing between the two Bynars—and yes, it was 110, and there, his own heart. And he studied what they were able to do with each other that went far beyond anything Bynars of his universe knew—but how perfect; a logical extension of our abilities—and then, he found his opportunity and dropped into the datastream.
In an instant, he was submerged. The sensation was like leaping into a whirlpool, only the water was made of light above, around, below: a cocoon of sensation that was at once totally alien and utterly familiar. He sensed two things at once: 110’s instinctive flinch at his intrusion, and 111’s hesitation. A slight stutter to her datastream, as if her mind had tripped.
He longed to touch her mind but first things first. He folded himself into 110, seamlessly, not unlike an anomalous bit of code that instantly mutates. And then, he reached for her with thoughts both eager and tentative….
Do not be afraid. It is I. I am 110 and yet my own person. I am…
But he was not fast enough. Maybe it was that he was, truly, alien. She was terrified and even as he soothed, cajoled, pleaded, she kicked back, pushed, tore away so violently that 110’s mind shrieked in agony—because it was not just a datastream from which he was being ejected; it was more complicated than that; and it hurt so much, their minds bled, and they were flailing now, the way drowning men snatch at a passing twig just before they go over the falls; she was gone, winging away, leaving chaos in her wake, and he/they left behind in a strong current that pulled him/them under…
Do not be afraid. Come back. Please…
…into the blackness…into an empty…
Gomez squatted next to the Bynar. Swathed in the cocoon of his suit, Soloman sat, perfectly rigid. His gray-white skin was still as a waxen statue. He didn’t blink. His breathing was so slow and shallow Gomez checked his suit’s readings just to make sure he was still alive. She moved her gloved hand up and down in his line of sight. Soloman didn’t twitch, didn’t blink, didn’t move. The readings scrolling on the computer panel were reflected on his faceplate and mirrored in the blue, still pool of his irises. The embedded chip on his right temple winked in a rapid staccato. “How long has he been like this?”
“About twenty minutes now.” Nog nibbled the left corner of his lower lip as he studied his tricorder. “Started about three minutes into it. Like he tripped into something, or got sucked in.”
“Has his buffer failed?”
“No. His neuropeptides are sky-high, like his brain is overloaded, or multitasking: serotonin, GABA, VBC, psilosynine. I wish I knew if all that’s good or bad.”
“If he’s not responding, I’d say that’s bad.” Gold’s voice, attenuated through the intercom in ops. Gomez and Conlon had gotten life support working in this room at least, so they had removed their helmets. (Soloman’s was still on, though; Gomez though it best not to disturb him.) In the background, Gomez heard Tev barking orders to reinforce da Vinci’s stabilizers. Shields were up, so there was no way to beam Soloman off Empok Nor—or even know if she should. The interval between distortion waves was shorter, and Nog’s readings confirmed what Gomez feared: that Soloman’s interface was the trigger.
Like he’s opened a gateway he can’t close…
“It’s getting pretty rough up here,” said Gold. “Tell me what you do know, and let’s go from there.”
“It’s like he’s frozen, sir. He’s still receiving input,” said Nog.
“To what? This twin? Himself?”
“Yes, sir, a quantum twin,” said Gomez. She was about to say more when she took a second to really think about what she’d just said. A quantum twin…and if this twin is Soloman before he became unbonded, then…“Oh, my God.”
“What?”
She said, very carefully, “Maybe, sir, it’s that he can’t terminate the connection, or maybe…he doesn’t want to. Or both.”
A fizz of static. Then, Gold said, “Come again?”
“A coma?” Gold frowned across 110’s body at Dax and Kane. The Bynar had been moved to a biobed, and 111 had been sedated. “What do you mean a coma?”
Dr. Tori Kane was a small woman, a strawberry blonde with freckles and green-gray eyes, and a head shorter than Gomez. She gave Gold a fierce, moderately contemptuous look: an expression that screamed nu, what, I’m speaking Swahili? “I mean,” she said with the type of enunciation a teacher might use on an exceptionally slow student, “that 110 is unresponsive. His autonomic funct
ions—blood pressure, pulse, respiration, temperature control—they’re fine. But he won’t come out of it. Or, maybe, he can’t.”
Salek stood at Gold’s left elbow. “Do we know why, Doctor?”
“It’s his chip. He’s…latched on to something the Bynars found when they communed with that device you brought on board.” Her head jerked left to a cylindrical object made of shiny metal and bristling with nasty-looking quills. “I still say this is one cockeyed plan.”
To Kane’s right, Dax stiffened. “It’s necessary.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Kane waved Dax’s comment away. “And I’m just the hired help.”
“Kane,” Gold warned.
“Fine, okay.” Kane gave a noisy exhale. “Captain, for all you know the Androssi hid something inside, like a computer virus.”
“Then why wasn’t 111 affected?”
“Beats me. Maybe the plan was to knock out one of them. Just as effective; neither one can function without the other.”
“Then why don’t we just shut it down?” asked Gold.
“Because I don’t know what that would do to 110, and if I understand the mission right, you need the Bynars.”
This was, unfortunately, true. Gold said, “But another Bynar? In the datastream? How? I didn’t think Bynars could exist as singletons.”
“What I don’t understand is how a singleton could interface with this device at all,” said Dax. Her long, dark brown hair was pulled into the ponytail she habitually sported, but errant strands straggled here and there, giving her a frayed look. Backhanding hair from her forehead, she sighed, and the cuffed earring in her right lobe jingled. “For that matter, where is he?”
“Perhaps,” said Salek, “this device is contaminated with something that can mimic a Bynar’s neural patterns. We know that the Androssi are exceptionally skilled at developing booby traps. Although one fails to understand how sabotage equates to the capture of an unintelligent bird.”
