“I’ve got to go back to camp,” he said, “because my suit has been compromised. The rest of you proceed for a hundred more meters along the bank of this bog, and be careful not to fall in. If you can’t capture a nujgharg by then, head back to camp. Don’t take any chances.”
Trudging wearily, Worf retraced his steps, wondering how his adopted son, Jeremy, was faring back on Earth. It would have been pleasant to keep Jeremy with him a little while longer, but this bizarre duty wasn’t destined to last forever, he hoped.
“Dad!” called a voice. “How are you?”
Worf stopped and whirled around, only to see his blond-haired son smiling at him. He was cured from his injuries, but he wasn’t wearing a protective suit, per orders. Worf was about to scold him when he realized that Jeremy couldn’t be here on Aluwna—no matter how realistic this facsimile was, it wasn’t the young man he had taken into his family.
But for the moment, he needed something, and Worf was willing to play along. “Jeremy, I’m hungry. I need a nujgharg. Can you point one out to me?”
The young human frowned at him. “Come on, Dad, haven’t you and your friends taken enough meat creatures? Haven’t you killed enough harmless beings on this planet? It’s time for all of you to go home, and I’ve come back to tell you that.”
Worf had been in enough negotiations to know that one had just begun. “What do you offer us if we go home?” he asked.
“Peace,” said the young man, stepping forward. “Nostalgia and comfort. Wouldn’t you like to be with K’Ehleyr again? Or Jadzia Dax? What about Tasha Yar and all the old comrades you have served with and miss so much. You don’t have to fear us—we could be a source of great comfort in your world.”
“Stop!” growled Worf. “We don’t want fakes and false comfort, or benign enslavement. Klingons, humans, Aluwnans—we are not your meat creatures which crawl upon the ground and are content to play hosts to parasites. Life is not easy for us, and we don’t want it to be. When our loved ones are gone, they are gone . . . except for living in our hearts and memories.”
The false Jeremy looked troubled by this. “We didn’t know it would be so difficult to connect with you. Jadzia had a parasite within her, so what is the difference?”
“The difference,” said Worf, “is that she chose to be joined with a Trill. That’s a huge difference, and one which you haven’t offered us.”
“Worf!” cried an alarmed voice from the forest. He looked over Jeremy’s shoulder to see his cadre of warriors stopped on the path twenty meters away. They carried a squirming nujgharg tied to a pole slung across their shoulders, and several of them were drawing disruptor pistols.
“Hold your fire!” he ordered. “I know it’s one of them. It is leaving and taking a message.” Worf turned back to the shimmering creature, which momentarily looked like Jadzia Dax. “Gather your race and take them to the farthest reaches of Aluwna. If we never see you again, perhaps you’ll be spared. But you must leave us completely alone, or you’ll be hunted down and killed, every last one of you.”
“Very well, Worf,” said Jadzia, her long dark hair flowing behind her strong, lovely face. “But you don’t know what you are giving up.”
“I know,” he replied, “but I would rather have real pain than false pleasure. Go quickly.”
“Good-bye,” she said, fading into the thick vines and brush of the Aluwnan forest.
Worf staggered, feeling faint, and his lieutenant rushed forward to steady him. “We must get you back to the doctor,” he said. “What were you doing, talking to that monster?”
“My job,” answered Worf somberly. “I’m an ambassador, remember.”
“But that thing . . . it’s dishonorable.”
“The enemy is beaten,” he said with an odd sense of certainty. “And they know it.”
* * *
The big, sawtoothed slug writhed in the charred dirt of the base camp, trying to escape back to the jungle, and a Klingon prodded it brutally with a pole. The creature contracted like a giant amoeba, and Leah Brahms almost felt sorry for it.
“How are we going to get that thing into a shuttlecraft and onto a transporter platform?” she asked.
“I can stun it,” answered Alexander Rozhenko, drawing his Starfleet phaser. He turned to Marla Karuw and asked, “Is that acceptable?”
“I suppose,” answered the former regent, crossing her arms. “Stunned or alert, it shouldn’t affect the experiment. By the way, where is your father?”
“Ambassador Worf had to return to the Doghjey for medical attention,” answered Alexander. “They had an encounter with some kind of swamp creature, and his suit got torn. Then he had a discussion with a poch’loD.”
“A what?” asked Karuw.
“That’s what the Klingons call the moss creatures,” said Leah Brahms with a smile. “I think it means ‘plant man.’”
“I’ll be glad when all the plant men are turned into mulch,” said Karuw with a scowl. She held up an isolinear chip and showed it to Alexander. “I have an emulation program which should turn your shuttlecraft transporter into one of our blue booths, complete with preset coordinates for the satellite we’re testing. Can I run it to make sure?”
“Go ahead,” answered Alexander, waving her toward a waiting shuttle. “This craft is at your disposal.”
The two of them entered the small vessel, leaving Leah Brahms outside, shivering in the cold. It was midday, and the snow flurries were particularly heavy. Or maybe they were ash flurries from a nearby volcano that had stepped up its activity, turning the sky an unpleasant shade of burnt umber with black streaks. The odors of sulfur and ammonia were also prominent today, even through the filters of the headgear she wore. The more time Leah spent on Aluwna, the less she was convinced that anything could be done to save the place. It pained her to think that her longtime home, Seran, was just like this, only there was no one left to try to reclaim it.
While she waited, Leah tried to concentrate on hopeful signs. The rate of plant growth had slowed somewhat, suggesting that the Genesis effect was approaching maturity. The areas that the Klingons had cleared were staying clear, except for what might be called normal encroachment, and blue transporter booths ringed the planet. Still she watched the Aluwnans who had already returned, and they moved like sullen ghosts through the unfriendly, unfinished landscape. More than once, the Klingons had caught depressed Aluwnans wandering about without their headgear, communing with moss creatures who pretended to be dead friends and family. The sickbays of every ship in orbit were filled with Aluwnans unable to cope with the devastation and hopelessness. Given the grimness of their reality, it was hard to blame them for seeking refuge in these prefabricated fantasies.
“We’re ready,” said a voice, breaking her out of her troubled thoughts. “The emulation works.”
Leah turned to see Alexander changing the setting on his phaser, and the Klingons who were guarding the big slug backed away. A Klingon doctor had treated the nujgharg with the same antibiotics given to everybody else, and it was supposedly free of the fungus, or at least in remission. As the monstrous beast tried to squirm away from its captors, Alexander aimed his phaser and zapped it with a brilliant blue beam. At once, the creature became still, lying in the dirt like a limp, slimy fish.
It took two Klingons to drag the dead weight into the confines of the shuttlecraft, and Leah Brahms remained outside. Even though this experiment had been her idea, she was now having second thoughts, because there was a finality to what they might discover here. The harsh reality wasn’t only in the howling winds and impenetrable jungle of Aluwna, it was also in the unseen pattern buffers on those satellites, floating silently in orbit. This might be the moment of reckoning for all who had toiled so long and hard to resurrect the eight million souls trapped in the ominous sky.
Marla Karuw jumped out of the shuttlecraft and dashed to the nearest blue enclosure on the edge of the clearing, and Leah followed close behind. As she ran, Karuw barked into the co
m device on her wrist, “All right, Vilo, the test subject has been beamed into test satellite one. Do you show it on your monitor?”
“Yes,” answered a tinny voice. “Biosigns look normal. I’m ready to beam back on your command.”
The energetic Aluwnan stopped at the blue booth and checked the status panel inside. “All right, it’s on and ready. Proceed!”
Leah Brahms lifted her tricorder, ready to check the slug’s health, although failure would be readily apparent. Both women held their breaths as the booth lit up and hummed with power, and a slight chime sounded. When the activity stopped, Karuw hesitantly opened the door to reveal . . .
The nujgharg lying on the transporter pad, unconscious but breathing. Brahms let out her pent-up breath and looked at Karuw. “Success?” she asked.
“Yes, but that was a satellite we expected to be successful,” she replied. “One which hadn’t shown any degradation. Now we’re going to send it to the one which malfunctioned.”
While she reported the results to Vilo Garlet on the Darzor, two brawny Klingons picked up the stunned beast and carried it back into the shuttlecraft. The blue boxes were one-way only, because transporting a life-form required considerably more power than receiving one. Leah Brahms paced in the snow flurries while Marla Karuw, Alexander, and the ever-helpful Klingons repeated the first part of the experiment.
After a few tense minutes, Karuw returned to the transporter booth, issuing commands to her subordinate. “Okay, Vilo, it’s in test satellite two. Are you reading it?”
There came an uncomfortable pause, and Garlet finally reported, “Readings are erratic. Remember, the plasma packs have fallen below the threshold in that satellite, and we haven’t gotten strong readings for a week. The pattern buffers show normal capacity, though, and the solar-power readings are within normal parameters.”
“There’s no way to know unless we try it.” Marla Karuw heaved her shoulders and glanced at Leah; then she ducked into the blue enclosure to check its status. While she was doing this, Alexander Rozhenko walked to Leah’s side and gave her a concerned look. Anxiety was thicker in the air than snow and ash.
Karuw stepped out and barked, “Proceed!”
Again the blue enclosure hummed and crackled, and static electricity raised the hair on the back of Leah’s neck. When it was over, they pushed the door open, and there lay the slug creature, looking none the worse for wear.
“Success!” shouted Marla Karuw, raising her fists into the air. At once, she was back on her com device, saying, “Vilo, let’s get ready for stage two. How many more boxes do we have to put down?”
“Fifty-five,” came the answer. “We can be done before nightfall.”
Something about the slug didn’t look right to Leah, however, and she turned on the medical tricorder in her hands. She had taken readings before the beast was stunned, after, and then before it was beamed into orbit the second time. The readings this time were quite different.
While everyone was congratulating each other, Brahms felt like the messenger who was about to be shot. “Marla,” she said, “there’s a problem.”
The Aluwnan was too busy issuing orders to respond, and Leah had to shout, “It’s dead, Marla! The creature is dead.”
That brought all immediate conversation to a halt, and the former regent whirled and stared at her. “Are you sure?”
“Look for yourself,” said the human, shoving the tricorder under her nose. “No life-sign readings. Now it’s just a hunk of cold meat.”
Karuw didn’t fully believe this conclusion until she pulled her own instrument from her belt and took her own readings. Then she slumped into the dirt and sat for a moment, legs crossed, staring down.
“We aren’t really familiar with these beasts,” said Alexander, sounding overly optimistic. “Perhaps the stress of transporting—”
“It survived the first time,” rasped Karuw. “It should have survived the second time. This means that every satellite which has dipped below the threshold is in doubt. We have to act no later than tomorrow.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Brahms.
“First,” she answered somberly, “we don’t need the Klingons anymore. It’s best to let them go home.”
“The Enterprise will arrive soon,” said Leah helpfully.
Marla Karuw gave her a strange smile. “Then they’ll be here to see stage two.”
* * *
Sitting on an examination table in sickbay, Worf looked quizzically at the cryptic message he had just received from Marla Karuw. It also bore the seal of the new overseer, Padrin, which made it official. The message read succinctly, “Ambassador Worf, please accept our profound gratitude for all that you and the Klingons have done for Aluwna. You can do no more, and we respectfully request that you withdraw your ships and forces.”
He turned to the com officer who had delivered the electronic missive. “When did you receive this?”
“Exactly three minutes ago,” answered the young female Klingon, snapping to attention. “Do you wish to send a reply?”
“Yes,” answered Worf. “Acknowledge receipt of message, and inform the overseer that all Klingon vessels will withdraw except for the Doghjey, which will remain in orbit to meet the Enterprise. Inform the other ships in the task force to recall their shuttlecraft and crew members from the planet. Tell them to withdraw to the outer planet in the solar system, where they will await my orders. Do you have that?”
“Yes, sir!” she answered sharply. “All ships to withdraw to the outer planet of the solar system, except the Doghjey. I believe that outer planet is called Aluwna Minor.”
“One more thing,” said Worf. “Tell my son, Alexander, to remain on the planet. Inform the captain of the Ya’Vang that he’s still assigned to me.”
“Yes, sir! Anything else?”
“No,” grumbled Worf, “I think that’s more than enough.”
The young ensign hurried off, leaving the old veteran to ponder this sudden change in their relationship with the Aluwnans. Yes, they had cleared enough of the jungle to erect all the transporter booths they wanted, but Klingons weren’t so easily dismissed. He didn’t know why exactly, but the hackles on the back of his neck were starting to rise. Worf felt danger in the troubled atmosphere of Aluwna.
Twenty-One
The Enterprise cruised majestically into orbit around the lush green planet, which was ringed by vivid volcanoes and thick gray clouds, and framed by foreboding polar icecaps. The ring of satellites was clearly visible on the overhead viewscreen, and Captain Picard gave orders not to establish orbit too close to the fragile satellites. His ship didn’t need geosynchronous orbit, because they could make adjustments automatically to keep in a fixed position. He had expected to see several Klingon vessels, along with the dozen or so Aluwnan vessels, but the stratosphere was oddly empty.
“Data,” he said with a puzzled frown, “where are the Klingons?”
“Only one Klingon ship is in orbit,” answered the android, “and that is the Doghjey. They are making their way toward our position at one-quarter impulse.”
“Ambassador Worf is hailing us,” reported the officer on the tactical station.
With a smile, Picard strode to the center of the bridge. “Put him on screen.”
A moment later, the familiar if somewhat dour face of Starfleet’s first Klingon officer appeared on the overhead viewscreen. “Hello, Ambassador,” said Picard cheerfully. “I was expecting a bigger welcoming party.”
“Good to see you, Captain,” answered Worf. “We are all that remain of the Klingon task force. By request of the Aluwnan authorities, the rest of my ships have withdrawn.”
Picard nodded thoughtfully. “Does that mean the mission has been a success?”
“Hardly,” answered the Klingon glumly. “Only a few hundred Aluwnans have been reconstituted from the satellites, and only one percent of the habitable land area has been reclaimed.”
“What is going on?” asked Picard.
“Permission to come aboard with my son, Alexander,” replied Worf. “We could brief you and the rest of your staff in the observation lounge.”
“Certainly,” answered the captain, his smile returning. “It will be like old times.”
“We can be in transporter range in approximately twenty minutes,” said Worf.
“Make it so. Picard out.” After the screen had gone blank, he turned to La Forge at the engineering station. “Geordi, run a scan on the Aluwnans’ satellites and see what you can find out about their status. Data, give him a hand. By the look on Worf’s face, I think something peculiar is going on.”
* * *
Farlo Fuzwik peered through the double doors into the shuttlebay of the Darzor and saw the seeress’s royal shuttlecraft, which had just returned from being pressed into service herding satellites around. The pilot and copilot stood outside the hatch, chatting with two of the shuttlebay personnel.
“Yes!” the lad whispered in triumph, pumping his fist into the air. Their means to get off this ship and back into hiding had just returned, and he was going to make the most of it. Ever since that annoying Klingon had caught him snooping in his quarters—and he’d let it slip that he knew who had killed Overseer Tejharet—Farlo had been keeping a low profile and waiting for an opportunity to escape. But not alone—that would be no good. He couldn’t use the transporter room, because that was crowded and under use constantly.
The boy wished he knew how to pilot a shuttlecraft himself, but he didn’t. He had watched the pilot’s actions and had tried to pick up the procedures, but they were unusually complicated. Flying in space was something that very few Aluwnans had ever accomplished, or even tried, and he told himself he would learn it someday. But for now, he just had to use his regal position and imperious manner, which he had learned to wield effectively.
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