Genesis Force

by John Vornholt

  “Like mass hysteria,” suggested Jeremy.

  Worf stopped pacing and scowled at his adopted son. “Klingons do not get hysterical. I was just taking normal precautions.”

  “Of course,” answered Jeremy with a smile. “But something was coming out of that jungle, and it couldn’t be who we thought we saw.”

  Alexander scratched his chin thoughtfully. “The odd thing is, I was just thinking about my mother, and what her death meant to me, when she appeared. That can’t be a coincidence.”

  “I saw Chancellor Gowron,” muttered one of the veteran officers in another cell. He shook his head in disbelief. “I had recalled that it was Ambassador Worf who killed him, and then he was there!”

  One by one, the hardened Klingons admitted to seeing loved ones or important figures from their past, some of whom were dead and all of whom could not possibly be on Aluwna. In fact, nothing could exist on Aluwna, except whatever devilish spawn the Genesis Wave had brought. Illness or madness, there was something terribly wrong with the lifelike apparitions on the planet, and not a single crew member complained about being locked away in the brig.

  “Could they be Founders from the Dominion?” asked Alexander.

  “I don’t believe even Founders could live through the Genesis Wave,” answered Worf. “And our sensors are now calibrated to detect Founders, ever since they infiltrated the High Council.”

  “Besides,” said Jeremy, “they didn’t really succeed in doing anything but scaring us off. It was like a dream—or a nightmare—one of those encounters that doesn’t make any sense.”

  The outer door opened, and the squat, gray-haired Captain Kralenk entered, followed by an elderly, white-haired doctor named M’Lorik. The doctor’s face was deeply scarred, and he walked with a limp, as if he had once been a warrior until an injury had forced him into the less strenuous field of medicine. The captain and doctor stopped just outside the forcefield that contained the members of the landing party, and any germs that accompanied them.

  “Ambassador Worf,” said the captain, “you showed good judgment in suggesting this quarantine. The doctor will tell you what he has discovered from your tissue samples, and I can tell you that Starfleet is making similar discoveries.”

  The old doctor cleared his throat and consulted a medical padd. “All of you are suffering from a fungal infection in your brains and lungs. This fungus does not appear to be fatal, although it is fast-moving and airborne, making it very contagious. Fungi of this sort can cause fevers and hallucination, but it is treatable.”

  “These were not hallucinations,” said Worf, bristling. “Perhaps that was a part of it, but I thought I killed one of these ghosts.”

  M’Lorik nodded sagely and said, “An airborne fungus could transmit information . . . perhaps even allow another creature to read your mind, if it were close enough. You were probably affected in the first hours on the planet’s surface. The captain has more information.”

  “Starfleet should have warned us what we were dealing with,” grumbled Captain Kralenk. “But we are only now receiving reports from other Genesis planets. This was not an isolated incident—both Starfleet and Romulan forces have experienced similar encounters, hallucinations, or whatever you want to call them. Some of them have resulted in much worse consequences, such as a Starfleet vessel that was taken over by officers under the influence of this fungus.”

  “Have you continued to send them reports about our situation here?” asked Worf.

  “Yes, I have,” replied the captain. “They promised to send some help as soon as they resolve their own problems. As yet, there’s no set procedure for dealing with these ghosts, so we can proceed as we see fit.”

  “I see fit to eradicate them,” answered Worf determinedly.

  “Until we do, we should wear protective suits to minimize exposure to the fungus. And make sure we keep the Aluwnans from going down there.”

  Captain Kralenk scowled. “That may be easier said than done. I’ve sent them directives, but they keep demanding that they be allowed to erect transporter booths—so they can start freeing their people in the pattern buffers.”

  “I will talk to them,” said Worf, starting for the door of his cell.

  “Halt!” ordered Dr. M’Lorik. “None of you will go anywhere until we rid you of this fungus. My staff will be here soon with an antibiotic which should work; then there will be more tests and examinations. You are the first cases of this type, and we want to make sure you are the last. So rest and resign yourselves to an indefinite stay in the brig. Those are my orders, and you are now under my command.”

  “Hmmm,” muttered Worf disgruntledly, “now you sound like a Starfleet doctor.”

  “I will take that as a compliment,” said the old healer with a smile.

  “Captain,” asked Alexander Rozhenko, “what about that creature we sent you?”

  “It was relatively harmless,” answered the captain, “although it was also infected by the fungus and a related parasite. Our science officer considers it to be a food source.”

  “A food source for what?” said Worf ominously. They all looked at one another, but nobody ventured a reply.

  * * *

  Feeling energized and optimistic after her visit to the planet, Marla Karuw walked into the dimly lit laboratory on the Darzor, where her master scientist, Vilo Garlet, was at work on a prototype transporter booth. It looked much like one of the blue enclosures that had been ubiquitous on Aluwna before the cataclysm, although it was smaller and could accommodate only one person at a time. The reduction in size was intended to make it possible to beam the booth itself from the ship’s transporter room to the planet. That would make it possible to install hundreds of the transporters in a relatively short time. Despite feeling better about their prospects since seeing Curate Molafzon again, Marla had no doubt that their time to act was running out.

  “Good work, Vilo,” she said as she admired the apparatus. “Does it meet all of my specs?”

  “Yes,” answered the scientist with a weary nod. He pointed out various features. “Here are the solar power cells and the wireless receiver. As you requested, it has a chromasynthesis emitter hidden in the base, which we can program and activate remotely. Without a considerable amount of testing, however, I’m not quite sure what chromasynthesis will do to the current flora and fauna on the planet.”

  “We may not need it,” answered Karuw, “because this new world may yet prove to be hospitable. Still I would like to have the option to terraform, if necessary.”

  “Without informing the Klingons?” asked Vilo Garlet.

  The regent scowled. “It’s our planet, and we can do what we want with it. I trust they’ll understand that, or leave. I won’t brook any interference from the Klingons, the Federation, or anybody else.”

  Fifteen

  As Admiral Alynna Nechayev sat at the dining table in her stateroom aboard the starship Sovereign, she tried not to look in the mirror on the far bulkhead. Instead she concentrated on the padds, printouts, and transparencies spread across her table, trying to catch up with dispatches and reports from all over the region devastated by the Genesis Wave. Whenever her gaze traveled in the direction of that mirror—or any mirror—the result was too shocking to contemplate. One half of her face was weathered by decades of command, hard decisions, and strife, and the other half was as smooth and pristine as a teenager’s complexion. On one side, the bags, wrinkles, jowls, and discoloration of her years were prominent; on the other side, they didn’t exist. One half was spotted with age, and the other half was freckled with youth.

  In a desperate attempt to save her life on Myrmidon, Commander Geordi La Forge had applied a glob of still-mutating Genesis material to her wounds; now she had to live with it, until she reached Starfleet Medical Center on Earth. Nechayev was a walking billboard for the wonders and horrors of the Genesis technology, and so were all these frantic pleas for help spread before her. What could she tell them? They had vanquished the
moss creatures who had tried to remake the Alpha Quadrant in their own image, but that had been too late for dozens of inhabited worlds and billions of innocent beings. Her security arrangements to protect Dr. Carol Marcus had failed, making her personally culpable for all that had happened.

  They could put her face back to normal, but they couldn’t excise her guilt.

  It had been several hours since the Sovereign had left the Enterprise crew on Starbase 302, and it seemed as if the worst should be over. But the mountain of requests on this table made it clear that the repercussions of the Genesis Wave would continue for some time. Already she had dispatched a special operative, Regimol, to investigate the existence of a portable Genesis device. That was frightening enough, but now reports were coming in from all over that the moss creatures were flourishing on several of the planets they had transformed.

  It seemed inevitable that there would be a second round of wholesale destruction and murder, except on one previously uninhabited planet where the moss creatures would be allowed to exist, never coming into contact with humanoid species. Everywhere else, they would have to be hunted down and destroyed. And that would have to be done with extreme caution, considering the telepathic and pseudo-shapechanging properties of these beings. As intelligent parasites, they were not really able to control their predatory behavior, but sympathy couldn’t enter into the equation. As more survivors tried to return home to their ravished planets, more victims would fall prey to these unwitting monsters, and this new threat had to be stopped before more damage was done.

  To that end, she had asked another passenger on the Sovereign, Dr. Leah Brahms, to issue a report to all the survivors of all the worlds affected by the Genesis Wave. Nobody knew more about the wave and its horrible aftermath than Leah Brahms, who had rushed halfway across the Alpha Quadrant trying to warn people. Also her phase-shifting radiation suit had saved countless lives at the height of the disaster. Nechayev had the feeling that they would be dealing with the fallout from Genesis for some time to come, and she was thinking about forming a special force to deal with such problems. Leah Brahms was the logical one to lead such a team. Judging from the mountain of paperwork on her dining-room table, there was a lot of work to do.

  What she didn’t want to do was scare off Dr. Brahms, when she needed her so badly. Leah had been left somewhat traumatized by her husband’s death and all she had witnessed, but she was a strong woman. And Nechayev had never been averse to using people under difficult circumstances—even pushing them beyond their endurance—for the greater good.

  Her door chime sounded, and the admiral lifted her chin and said, “Enter.”

  The door whooshed open, and the attractive but somewhat gaunt figure of Leah Brahms entered her quarters. Her shoulder-length, chestnut-colored hair was not unkempt but looked a little matted. “You sent for me, Admiral?” asked the engineer.

  “Yes, Leah, please have a seat,” said Nechayev pleasantly. She motioned to the food replicator. “Do you want something to eat or drink?”

  “No thank you.” Brahms took a seat at the table, averting her eyes so as not to stare too much at Nechayev’s remarkably altered face.

  “I read your report,” said the admiral. “Short and to the point, yet stressing what dangers we still face. I ordered that it be distributed immediately, although it still has to go through channels.”

  “I understand,” replied Brahms. “Thank you.”

  Nechayev sighed heavily and sat back in her seat. Then she motioned to the piles of documents before her. “As you can see, we’ve still got a ton of work to do. Most of these are dispatches from Genesis planets where there are concerned survivors. Your report will answer many of their questions, but some of them face arduous tasks in resettling their planets.”

  Brahms winced. “I don’t know that I would want to live on one of those planets. Aren’t there any alternatives?”

  “For some of them, no,” answered Nechayev. She rifled through the documents and picked up a padd, glancing at it to make sure it was the right one. “Take this compilation of reports, for example. It’s about a planet named Aluwna, which was hit late in the wave’s cycle. We’ve heard from their government and from the Klingons who went to help them, but arrived too late. We weren’t able to reach them with your phase-shifting technology, so they were forced into extreme measures. Why don’t you read it, while I catch up on some of these others.”

  She handed the padd to Leah Brahms, who read it with interest. Nechayev perused another document, while she glanced occasionally at the engineer. From her furrowed brow, it was clear that Brahms found the report fascinating.

  “Wow,” she said somberly, setting the padd on the table, “this is amazing. All those people trapped in transporter buffers. I can think of a million things that could go wrong, especially if they’re trying to return these people to a new Genesis planet.”

  “You’re right,” agreed Nechayev. “The Klingons are helping them, and they can handle the moss creatures. But I believe the Aluwnans could use some technical help.”

  Leah narrowed her eyes. “Like me?”

  “You’re all I have,” said the admiral with a smile. “This ship is returning to Earth, where I have an appointment with Starfleet Medical. But we’ll pass fairly close to Aluwna, and I can put you on a runabout and get you there fairly quickly. As more personnel are freed up, I’ll send them along to help you.”

  “I didn’t know that I worked for you,” said Leah.

  Nechayev absentmindedly touched the youthful side of her face. “I have more than a few special operatives working for me, and none of them ever complain that the work is boring. I know you’re at loose ends, and sometimes hard work is the best antidote to grief. I’d be honored if you would join my team. What do you say, Dr. Brahms.”

  “Can I quit anytime?”

  “But of course,” answered Nechayev. “This is strictly voluntary.”

  “Then I’ll go to Aluwna,” replied Leah Brahms. “And we’ll take it from there.”

  “Thank you,” said the admiral with a broad smile. She rose to her feet and offered the younger woman her hand. “Welcome aboard.”

  * * *

  Farlo Fuzwik squirmed uncomfortably in his seat as he sat in the presence of Overseer Tejharet, Seeress Jenoset, and his fellow seeress consort, Padrin. He had wanted to bring Candra with him to this private dinner in the royal stateroom, but Jenoset had insisted—with steely resolve—that this was a dinner for members of the royal family only. Even the regent had not been invited, although it was clear that Marla Karuw was very busy, running to and from the planet, meeting with scientists, and overseeing the satellites. It was the first opportunity for him to spend any time with the overseer, who at first was shocked by his youth. Then it became clear that very little the seeress did could shock him for very long, and he had grown sullen and distracted.

  They made small talk as they ate, with Jenoset and Padrin complaining about the food and their accommodations on the ship, although it all seemed grand to Farlo. They also bemoaned the loss of so many cultural institutions and people they knew, especially a curate named Molafzon. For a moment, the overseer became animated as he wondered how Curate Molafzon had disappeared or gotten lost in the chaos of the evacuation, and what a loss it was. After that, he lapsed back into sullen retrospection. Although this wasn’t a cheerful dinner party, it was clear that these three people were comfortable in each other’s presence, and Farlo wondered if he would ever fit in so easily.

  After dessert, Seeress Jenoset sat stiffly in her chair and said, “I suggested we have dinner together for a reason. I want to discuss when and how we should go about returning the traditional power of government to the royal family, where it has rested for eons of peace and prosperity.”

  The glaze left the overseer’s eyes, and he sat up to listen as the seeress went on to say, “I realize we turned over the reins of government to a regent for very good reason, although no regent has ever held power in
any of our lifetimes. In the past, a regent has served only when the overseer was too young or incapacitated, and that is not the case. I salute Marla Karuw for her daring and successful evacuation of Aluwna, but the threat is over. There is no immediate emergency, just a great deal of work to do. We must face the prospect of rebuilding our homes and society, and the people will be helped in this great task by a sense of tradition and continuity with our past.”

  “Absolutely,” agreed Padrin. “It will encourage them to step off our transporters and see the power structure they have come to trust. Plus any ill feelings over the lottery and those passed over can be attributed to the regent. Don’t get me wrong, she did a great job—but the overseer has an opportunity to rise above those difficult decisions.”

  Overseer Tejharet sniffed disdainfully. “What do you want to do with Marla Karuw? Simply toss her off with a handshake?”

  “Husband,” said Jenoset sweetly, “may I remind you that not long ago, Marla Karuw was convicted of heresy. Considering the seriousness of her crimes, she should be grateful for the pardon you granted her. In other words, she was paid in advance for her work during this crisis. Our universities and laboratories are gone, so we can’t give her a prominent post—but I’m sure we will find a way to dutifully honor Marla Karuw.”

  Jenoset’s eyes narrowed as she added, “However, leaving her permanently in charge of Aluwna is pointless. It would also endanger any future transfer of power. If we have a reign of regents, who would choose them after we’re gone? Thanks to the Hand of the Divine, our family has remained untouched by this horrendous disaster.” The elegant seeress glanced pointedly at Farlo and granted him a smile. “In fact, we have gained in number, and the future of our line is assured. This is not the time to toss out our most noble traditions. Tejharet, you made her the regent, and you could return power to its rightful place, whenever you wish. I urge you to do so immediately.”

  Farlo and everyone else in the room turned to look at the overseer, who shifted uneasily under their gaze. He looked older, almost confused, and for a moment Farlo wondered if Tejharet was up to the task of ruling during these bizarre times.