Progenitor

by Michael Jan Friedman

  And that member was Greyhorse.

  The doctor was breathing heavily even now, still feeling the effects of the quicker pace. But then, he was a big man, not exactly made for long-distance running, and to Picard’s knowledge he had never dedicated himself to a fitness regimen.

  Of course, Greyhorse had prescribed such regimens for others. Why was it that physicians so seldom practiced what they preached?

  Simenon glanced back at the doctor. Then he muttered something beneath his breath.

  “What’s that?” asked Greyhorse.

  Simenon shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “Don’t give me that,” Greyhorse said. “You don’t mutter at someone that way and then not tell them what you’re thinking.”

  The Gnalish rolled his eyes. “All right. I admit it. I was wishing that you were in better shape.”

  The doctor frowned. “Really.”

  “Really. And,” Simenon added, “while I was at it, I wished one of the Asmunds could have come in your place.”

  Picard would have expected Greyhorse to react negatively to such a statement. But if his feelings were hurt, he didn’t show it.

  Instead, he told Simenon, “Believe me, so do I.”

  Clearly, the admission caught Simenon by surprise. “You know,” he said, “no one told you you had to come.”

  Greyhorse chuckled derisively. “As usual, my friend, your gratitude knows no bounds.”

  “Gentlemen,” said Picard, “I suggest we table this discussion for the time being. As you may have noticed, the Asmunds are not in evidence here, nor is there any possibility that they will arrive before the start of the ritual.”

  “And as for the doctor’s conditioning,” Ben Zoma chimed in optimistically, “I expect him to catch his second wind any moment now.”

  Simenon looked at Greyhorse. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said Ben Zoma.

  “But,” Simenon added as he forged ahead, “I doubt it.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  COMMANDER WU HAD HER HELM OFFICER drop the Stargazer out of warp near the center of the gargantuan Oneo Madrin system, at a point more or less equidistant from its twin stars. It was a tricky maneuver, considering the complex balance of planets and gravity wells in the system.

  However, Idun pulled it off without any apparent difficulty.

  “Proceed at half impulse,” said the second officer.

  “Half impulse,” Idun confirmed.

  Wu advanced toward the viewscreen, which showed her a substantial section of the slender, golden accretion bridge that linked the system’s two young suns. One sun was substantially bigger than the other, which was why it was able to steal a stream of charged particles from its neighbor’s photosphere.

  Not surprisingly, there was no sign of the Belladonna. But then, the research vessel was less than a hundred meters in length. Trying to pick her out visually against the vast backdrop of a binary star system made finding a needle in a haystack seem ridiculously easy by comparison.

  Fortunately, the ship’s sensors weren’t restricted to the visible spectrum. They also included wideband electromagnetic scanners, virtual neutrino spectrometers, and a host of other devices.

  It was the nonvisual array that Wu was relying on to pick out the Belladonna. She glanced at Gerda, who had primary responsibility for sensor operations.

  “Got them?” she asked.

  The navigator frowned as she worked at her console. “Not yet,” she was forced to report.

  Wu was surprised. Turning back to the image on the viewscreen, she wondered what the problem was. The Belladonna’s captain had sent out a high-priority distress call. He wouldn’t have resorted to that option if his ship had been in any shape to leave Oneo Madrin.

  According to that logic, the research ship should still have been here, and Gerda’s sensors should have identified it in a matter of moments. But they hadn’t done that.

  Wu’s mind raced, going through the possibilities. None of them was very promising—and the ones that involved hostile intervention were the least promising of all.

  She could think of half a dozen species in this part of space that might have been tempted to attack the Belladonna—among them the Enniac, the Azhuridai and the Topoli. It was unlikely that any of them would have done so for fear of the repercussions, but one never knew.

  Fortunately, there was a way to see if the research vessel might have met with foul play. “Scan for ion trails,” she told Gerda.

  The navigator looked up at her. “You think they were attacked?”

  Wu shrugged. “Let’s find out.”

  It didn’t take long. In a matter of seconds, Gerda had called up a graphic identifying ion concentrations in the area.

  As it happened, there was only one discernible trail. That pretty much ruled out the possibility of an assault. But the exercise was a valuable one nevertheless, because it showed them the route the Belladonna had taken through the system.

  And in the process, it gave them a pretty clear picture of where she had gone—a picture that, as it sank in, turned out to be as disheartening as it was unexpected.

  Gerda muttered something harsh in the Klingon tongue. Wu didn’t speak a word of Klingon, but she had no trouble understanding the gist of the navigator’s remark.

  “They’re in the accretion bridge,” Idun said for the benefit of anyone who hadn’t figured it out.

  Wu nodded. “It seems that way, all right.”

  She considered the conditions the Belladonna would be facing, ticking them off one by one in her mind. High levels of radiation. Powerful magnetic fields. Near-solar temperatures, mitigated only by the scarcity of material in which thermal energy could be stored. No one could survive in that environment for long.

  “We’ve got to get her out of there,” she said.

  Of course, it might already have been too late. If the Belladonna’s shields had been compromised even a little . . .

  Nonetheless, they had to try.

  The second officer turned to Gerda. “Can you identify them?”

  The navigator shook her head. She was rotating sensor modalities, one after the other. “I’m picking up some kind of solid object. But it doesn’t look like a ship. At least, not a whole one.”

  Wu bit her lip. Was it possible that the vessel had already blown up? Or been vaporized?

  “There’s a reason for that,” said Kastiigan.

  He was standing at the tiny science station aft of the captain’s chair, his jowly face caught in the crawl of a moving graphic. Apparently, he had joined his colleagues on the bridge without Wu’s noticing it.

  “A reason?” she prodded.

  “Yes,” said the science officer. “According to my readings, only a portion of the Belladonna exists within the accretion bridge. The rest... does not.”

  “You mean she’s been ripped apart?” the commander asked, trying to get a handle on the situation.

  “No,” said Kastiigan. “There’s no indication that the Belladonna has sustained that sort of damage. Her sensor profile just seems to go so far and no farther.”

  “Where is she?” Wu demanded. “I want to see her for myself.”

  “I’ll relay the coordinates to Lieutenant Asmund’s station,” the Kandilkari said obligingly.

  A moment later, Wu saw what Kastiigan was talking about. The Stargazer’s sensors were picking up a fragment of what might have been a Federation research ship. But it showed no signs of the carbonization or twisted metal that would have resulted from a hull-rending decompression.

  It was just as the science officer had said—the Belladonna simply wasn’t all there.

  Wu shook her head. It didn’t make sense. She was tempted to say so until she remembered something—that she was the one in charge of the ship at the moment. She had to keep her head if she expected her subordinates to do so.

  “Good work,” she told Kastiigan.

  “Thank you,” he responded.

&
nbsp; The second officer stared at Gerda’s monitor, coming up with question after question for which she had no ready answers. For instance, how had a piece of the Belladonna wound up in the accretion bridge? And what had happened to the rest of the ship?

  Then she got something new—an answer for which she had no question. “Commander,” said Gerda, “we’re detecting life signs.”

  Wu watched as Gerda magnified the surviving portion of the research ship on her monitor. It was covered with red blips, each of them representing a viable, functioning life-form.

  Without question, there were living beings aboard—humanoid, judging from their biochemical makeup. But how could that be? This was only a section of the Belladonna.

  Or was it?

  “Commander,” said Idun, her voice taut with concern, “we’re being drawn in the direction of the accretion bridge.”

  The second officer eyed the viewscreen and saw a confirmation of what Idun had told her. The accretion bridge was growing larger at a slow but noticeable rate.

  Wu didn’t get it. Accretion bridges didn’t have enough mass to generate gravitic forces. So what in the name of Zefram Cochrane was tugging at them?

  As calmly as she could, she made her way to the helm. “Reverse engines,” she said. “Full power.”

  Idun carried out the command. For a tense moment or two, it wasn’t clear whether she would win the battle or not. Then she turned to Wu and reported that the Stargazer was moving backward, returning to her original position.

  Indeed, the commander could see it on the screen. The accretion bridge was gradually diminishing in size.

  “Maintain thrusters,” Wu told her, “until we’re two thousand kilometers from the accretion bridge.”

  “Aye, Commander,” said the helm officer, and they continued to retreat from the phenomenon.

  Wu returned to her seat and regarded the image on the viewscreen. She no longer wondered how the Belladonna had wound up in the accretion bridge. Obviously, it had succumbed to the forces the Stargazer had just managed to overcome.

  But where in blazes were those forces coming from? She couldn’t say—just as she couldn’t say how all those people had survived on a mere piece of a ship, or how it had become merely a piece of a ship in the first place.

  Maybe the Belladonna’s crew could tell her. “Hail them,” the commander told Paxton.

  The comm officer did as she asked. But after a moment, he said, “No response.”

  Obviously, she would have to take another tack.

  “Launch a probe into the accretion bridge,” Wu commanded, determined to obtain some answers while there was still time to help the living on the Belladonna.

  Back in his Academy days, Picard had run marathons. What’s more, he had fared rather well in them, regardless of whether the course before him was crumbly desert dirt or rocky mountain turf or some smooth artificial surface.

  But then, he hadn’t run those races on anything even remotely like the stuff he now found underfoot.

  “There’s a rhythm to it,” Simenon told him. “All you’ve got to do is find it.”

  Picard frowned and tried to follow his engineer’s instructions. However, the springy, reddish-brown moss beneath his feet seemed to want to bounce when he didn’t, and vice versa.

  “Easy for you to say,” he told his engineer.

  When they had begun this race, the ground had been pretty much what one found in most forests—an uneven but generally reliable mixture of whatever substances the surrounding trees cared to contribute. But a few minutes ago, that had changed.

  “This is most unsettling,” Vigo observed. Obviously, he was having trouble making the adjustment, too.

  “Get used to it,” Simenon told them. “From here on in, the trail will be like this more often than not.”

  And that wouldn’t be a disadvantage to the Aklaash or the Fejjimaera, Picard reflected. But it would be a disadvantage to them—a group made up mostly of offworlders unaccustomed to this kind of terrain—as if they weren’t laboring under enough of a disadvantage already.

  Suddenly, the trees up ahead seemed to explode into a million fragments and the sky was filled with a flight of green and purple avians. Shading his eyes from the shafts of sunlight that penetrated the forest, the captain saw that the creatures were vaguely reminiscent of a flock of Terran geese.

  As they flew, their wings flapping in graceful unison, they shed their plumage over the forest. The green and purple feathers wafted and rolled lazily, glinting with iridescent majesty.

  “The colunnu?” Picard asked.

  “That’s right,” Simenon confirmed.

  “They’re beautiful,” Vigo observed, squinting so he could see. “And so fragile-looking.”

  “Yes,” said Ben Zoma. “Hard to believe they would pick us clean if we let our guard down.”

  Thanks to Simenon, Picard knew exactly what his first officer meant. The colunnu’s feathers were extremely poisonous. If any of them were to prick his unprotected skin, they would paralyze him in twenty seconds and shut down his nervous system in another ten.

  And the colunnu, who had an uncanny knack for knowing when one of their feathers had claimed a victim, would be on him almost instantly. If Simenon’s cautions weren’t exaggerations, his bones would be picked clean even before the poison finished its work.

  “A gruesome end,” said the captain, “to be sure.”

  That, he mused, was why they were all wearing thick, sturdy boots—to make certain they didn’t step on any green and purple feathers and come to regret it.

  Suddenly, Joseph stopped in his tracks and looked around. “What’s that?” he asked.

  Greyhorse stopped, too. “I didn’t hear anything,” he said.

  “Listen,” the security officer insisted.

  They stopped and listened—all of them, Picard included. That’s when he heard it—a barking sound in the distance.

  “Simenon?” said Ben Zoma.

  “Sanjarra,” the Gnalish told them.

  “Which ones were those again?” asked the doctor.

  Simenon shot him a disparaging look. “Four-legged predators, travel in packs . . . starting to sound familiar?”

  Greyhorse’s brow furrowed. “These aren’t the ones that can snap our bones with their teeth, are they?”

  “In fact,” said the engineer, “they are.”

  “What are the odds they’ll pass us by?” asked Vigo.

  “Not very good,” Simenon told him.

  The barking was getting louder. “As I recall,” Picard said, “sanjarra hate water.”

  “That’s correct,” the Gnalish rasped. “Unfortunately, we’re not near any water.”

  “So what do we do?” asked Greyhorse. “Take to the trees?”

  Simenon shook his scaly head. “It wouldn’t help. Sanjarra are born in the trees.”

  “Then what?” the doctor demanded.

  Simenon looked grim. “We get our sticks out and stand our ground—and hope they’ve eaten recently.”

  Picard drew his stick from its sheath and watched his officers do the same. Then, without anyone telling them to do so, they put their backs together and formed a knot.

  As the beasts got closer, their growling grew louder and more frenzied. They were within a hundred meters now, the captain judged, though the forest still hid them from view.

  His heart was pounding and he could feel a trickle of sweat running down the side of his face. Primitive reactions, he noted. But then, this was a primitive confrontation.

  Picard would have given much for the reassuring weight of a phaser pistol in his hand. Unfortunately, the nearest directed energy weapon was in orbit high above the planet’s surface, securely locked in the Stargazer’s armory.

  More growling, closer still. Without question, the sanjarra had caught their scent.

  “As soon as you see them,” said Simenon, “go on the offensive. Keep them off-balance. Once they leap, we’re as good as dead.”

&nbs
p; Another flight of colunnu crossed the sky in close formation. But this time, the captain didn’t look up to appreciate them.

  He had a more immediate concern.

  Chapter Fifteen

  WU FELT AS IF she had been watching the streaming splendor of Oneo Madrin’s accretion bridge for hours before the Stargazer finally got some telemetry from its class IV probe. In fact, though, it could only have been seven or eight minutes. “We’re receiving,” Paxton announced.

  “What have we got?” asked the second officer, getting up to join him at his console.

  Paxton frowned as he studied his communications monitors. “There’s interference from all the radiation, Commander. I’m trying to eliminate it . . .”

  Wu leaned over his shoulder to see how he was doing. Little by little, the comm officer was cleaning up the image on his central monitor. As he did this, Wu could see the outline of a ship emerging.

  Or rather, part of a ship.

  But the part she could make out appeared undamaged, just as their sensors had already indicated. It was as if something had sheared the Belladonna in half.

  Then Wu saw that there was something else in the accretion bridge—a churning maelstrom of energy that had no business being there, but was dancing around the severed end of the research ship. “What’s that?” she asked Paxton.

  The comm officer peered at his monitor, its glare casting crimson shadows on his face. “It looks like a graviton storm—though I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of this intensity.”

  “Is it intense enough to have drawn us toward the accretion bridge?” Wu asked.

  “I don’t believe so,” Kastiigan told her. “Nor do I believe it is intense enough to have trapped the Belladonna.”

  The second officer frowned. Something had exerted an attractive force on them. If not the graviton storm, what then?

  As if he had read her mind, Kastiigan said, “Graviton storms seldom occur spontaneously. They are usually an incidental effect of some other sort of disturbance.”

  “So maybe this one is concealing something,” Paxton speculated.