Progenitor

by Michael Jan Friedman

  “Commander?” said Kastiigan, interrupting Wu’s thoughts.

  She turned to him. “Lieutenant?”

  The science officer didn’t look happy. “There’s something here I think you should see.”

  Wu got up and made her way to his side. “What is it?”

  Kastiigan pointed a long, wrinkled finger at his central monitor. “I don’t know why, but the Belladonna’s rate of descent into the sinkhole seems to have accelerated.”

  “Accelerated...?” Wu echoed, a chill climbing her spine.

  She took a look at the Kandilkari’s monitor, hoping he had jumped to the wrong conclusion. However, the data bore him out. The scientists’ vessel was slipping into the sinkhole faster than before.

  Much faster.

  No, thought Wu. She can’t do this to us. She forced herself to ask Kastiigan the obvious question: “How long before she reaches the point of no return?”

  The science officer frowned. “It’s difficult to say, Commander. But if she continues at this pace, I would say the Belladonna has no more than thirty minutes left.”

  Thirty minutes, Wu thought. And Jiterica had gone in thinking she would have a couple of hours.

  If there were a way to contact the ensign and warn her, the commander would have done it in a heartbeat. But had it been possible to communicate with the research vessel, Jiterica wouldn’t have had to make the trip in the first place.

  Wu would just have to hope that Jiterica noticed the change in the Belladonna’s situation and acted accordingly. Otherwise, the ensign and everyone else on that ship were doomed.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  JITERICA WAS PREPARED to spend whatever time it took to find the crew of the Belladonna. However, she believed she would accomplish her objective more quickly if she headed for a place where survivors were likely to congregate. One such place, she decided, was the bridge.

  Following the corridor, she stopped at the first turbo-lift she came to and summoned a compartment using the pad set into the bulkhead. But she didn’t have to take it to the bridge to make contact with the crew of the Belladonna. One of them was in the lift when the doors opened, ready to emerge into the hallway.

  “Damn!” the scientist cried and took an involuntary step back, obviously surprised to see her there. He was a tall man with deepset eyes and a receding line of dark hair. Recovering, he said, “You’re the one who opened the hatch, aren’t you?”

  “I am,” Jiterica confirmed.

  He looked at her through the faceplate of her containment suit and his eyes narrowed. Her insubstantial-looking visage must have appeared strange to him. But then, it appeared strange to the ensign as well; she had only created it to make her colleagues feel more comfortable in her presence.

  “What—?” the human began. Then he stopped himself. “No. Never mind that. Just tell me... are you here to help us? That’s what everyone seems to think, and I sure as hell hope they’re right.”

  “I am indeed here to help you,” she told him. “My name is Jiterica. I hold the rank of ensign on the Federation starship Stargazer.”

  The man nodded. “I guess that explains the Starfleet insignia on your containment suit.”

  “How many of you are there?” Jiterica asked.

  “Twenty-three,” the human told her.

  She made a mental note of it. “Casualties?”

  “A few injuries, but no deaths,” he said. Then he added, “So far.”

  So far, so good, Jiterica thought, quoting an expression she had heard on the ship.

  “My commanding officer has come up with a plan to get you out of here,” she said. “However, it will require your cooperation.”

  Just then, someone rounded a bend in the corridor. It was an Andorian, a female. As she approached Jiterica, her brow creased and her antennae bent all the way forward.

  “I guess you got here before I did,” the Andorian remarked.

  “She’s with Starfleet,” the human explained before his colleague could ask. “They’ve come to help us escape this thing.” He turned back to the ensign. “What do you need us to do?”

  “To begin with,” said Jiterica, “I need you to take me to your captain.”

  Simenon steeled himself for yet another ordeal—one for which he was poorly equipped, to say the least.

  “You’re sure we can’t help?” Joseph asked.

  “Surely the Elders can see you’re in no shape for this,” Vigo pointed out.

  Simenon shook his head. “Single combat, to take place immediately after the race. That’s the ancient law.”

  Picard frowned. “Your arm—”

  “Has felt better,” the engineer agreed. “But I’m going to try not to let Kasaelek know that.”

  Not that it was likely to matter. In the few times his subspecies had been involved in such combats, they hadn’t even come close to winning. And as the captain had noted, Simenon wasn’t operating at full strength.

  But there was no alternative. He had to face Kasaelek or concede the contest—and the prize.

  The Elder who had announced the decision looked to Simenon. “Are you ready, ritual runner?”

  “I am,” the engineer told him. As if to underline the fact, he moved into the center of the clearing.

  The Elder looked to Kasaelek. “And you?”

  The Aklaash moved into the center of the clearing as well. “Ready,” he said, obviously eager to get the combat over with.

  The Elder regarded them. “Let it begin.”

  Jiterica looked at the captain of the Belladonna, a thickset man with close-cropped hair and a full, blond beard, across the confines of his ready room. “That is,” she said, finishing her outline of Commander Wu’s plan, “if you still have impulse power.”

  “Oh,” said the captain, “we’ve still got it, all right. We just don’t know how much. After all, we gunned the engines pretty hard trying to get out of this mess on our own.”

  “I will need to speak to your engineer,” the ensign told him.

  The captain sighed. “Unfortunately, he was injured early on. His assistant is running things.” He leaned forward. “And between you, me, and the bulkhead, he’s not the brightest star in the firmament.”

  The captain of the Belladonna was an unusual man, Jiterica observed. Despite the dire nature of his circumstances, he seemed to take it all in stride.

  “If you like,” the ensign said, “I can offer him assistance. I was trained in engine operations at the Academy.”

  The captain nodded. “Sounds like a plan. Let’s go.”

  But when the ready room doors opened for them, a human youngling was revealed standing outside them. His mouth fell open as he caught sight of Jiterica.

  “My son,” the captain explained, throwing his arm around the young man. “Little shy, but he’s a whip. Curious about everything. Mind if he tags along?”

  The ensign said she didn’t mind at all.

  Simenon had expected Kasaelek to try a preemptive strike at the outset of their winner-take-all combat. As it turned out, he was right.

  The Aklaash had barely gotten leave to begin before he launched a meaty fist at his opponent. It was only because Simenon was expecting it that he was able to duck and shuffle past the attack.

  But Kasaelek wasn’t done yet. Not nearly. Unlike the engineer, he seemed to have plenty of energy left in him even after his catch-up sprint through the woods.

  As the Aklaash wheeled and came at him again, Simenon had a moment to appreciate how mismatched they were. Kasaelek was proportioned just like him from his scaly head to the tip of his tail, but he towered over the engineer the way an adult might tower over his offspring. And the Aklaash wasn’t hurt. It was only a matter of time before he used his superior reach to land a blow from which Simenon couldn’t recover.

  Unless, of course, Simenon used his vaunted Mazzereht intelligence to even up the contest somehow.

  Easier said than done, he told himself, as he ventured to duck Kasaelek’s
second rush. This time, however, he couldn’t avoid it entirely. The Aklaash landed a glancing blow to his right shoulder—the one above his injured ribs.

  The resulting wave of pain made Simenon lightheaded, but he managed to scurry away. Damn, he thought, unable to keep from wincing. He couldn’t keep this up much longer. He had to do something.

  Think, Phigus. Use that nimble brain the gods gave you. If you can fix a warp drive, you can beat a big, dumb Aklaash.

  And then it came to him.

  Truthfully, he hadn’t come up with the idea on his own. But if you’re going to borrow, he thought, borrow something you know has worked.

  He waited until Kasaelek came about for another go at him. Then he braced himself, legs apart for balance, knowing he might not get a second chance at this.

  The Aklaash bared his teeth and charged—but this time, he wasn’t trying to bludgeon Simenon senseless with a single blow. He was coming on with his muscular arms spread wide, hoping to wrap them around his adversary and then batter him senseless.

  It’s now or never, Simenon told himself.

  Marshaling what little energy he had left, he scooted between Kasaelek’s legs and grabbed his adversary’s tail—just as the duwiijuc had done to him earlier in the day.

  No doubt, it was the last thing Kasaelek had expected of him. With a cry of rage, he whirled about in the clearing, dragging Simenon with him. The engineer felt as if his arm muscles were shredding, as if his ribs on that side were going to crack in half. But he didn’t let go of Kasaelek’s tail. In fact, he hung on that much harder.

  Kasaelek tried to reach behind him, to peel Simenon off. But he couldn’t. Even his mighty arms didn’t reach that far. And the more he tried, the more the effort took its toll on him.

  “Coward!” he rasped. “Pile of dung!”

  Simenon didn’t let the taunts get to him. If anything, they gave him the courage to keep going, to endure the agony in his side—because if Kasaelek was resorting to curses, he had to be faltering.

  “I’ll rip you apart!” the Aklaash railed at him. “I’ll tear out your entrails and feed them to the sanjarra!”

  The engineer barely heard what he was saying. He was too busy biting back his pain. But he wouldn’t let go.

  And Kasaelek, who hadn’t shown any signs of fatigue when the combat started, began to show them with increasing rapidity. His breath came harder and harder. He staggered and flailed with arms that looked as if they had weights attached to them. And his fiery insults turned into a long, formless snarl of anger and frustration.

  Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. His gigantic frame began to sag. And wracked by exhaustion, he crashed to his knees.

  It was exactly the opening Simenon had been waiting for. Thrusting aside his own red storm of pain, he scrambled for a rock at the edge of the clearing.

  It wasn’t more than a couple of meters away, but it might as well have been a light-year. If the engineer didn’t grab it and put it to good use before Kasaelek got to his feet, all the torment he had endured would go for nothing.

  As the Aklaash drew in a deep, shuddering breath, Simenon’s fingers closed on the rock. Then he changed direction and launched himself at his bigger, stronger adversary.

  By then, Kasaelek had planted his right foot on the ground and was preparing to get up. But he hadn’t cast a glance in Simenon’s direction. At least, not yet.

  Calling on his ancestors for strength, the engineer lifted the rock and cracked Kasaelek over the head with it. The Aklaash slumped and grabbed the ground, but didn’t fall. Simenon smashed him in the skull a second time, forcing the knee Kasaelek had raised to crumble, but the giant was still fending off unconsciousness.

  One last time, Simenon thought.

  Clinging to that promise, he raised the rock as high as he could and brought it down on the Aklaash’s cranium. And to his relief, it knocked Kasaelek flat, stripping the Aklaash of what little sense still rattled about in his head.

  I’ve won, the engineer told himself.

  But it didn’t sink in until he looked around and saw his comrades cheering for him at the top of their lungs. Even the captain, who usually kept his emotions to himself. Even Greyhorse, for the gods’ sake. They were shaking their fists and roaring with triumph as if it were they who had toppled Kasaelek.

  I’ve won, Simenon repeated. And he had—not only for himself but for his father and his brothers, who would have been celebrating his victory now if they had lived long enough to join him in the ritual.

  Someone put a hand on Simenon’s shoulder. Looking up, he saw that it was the Elder who had called for the combat.

  “Rise,” he said.

  Simenon heaved the rock away, shuddering at the pain it cost him. Then, ever so slowly and carefully, he stood.

  He noticed that the Fejjimaera had entered the clearing. They were standing at its edges, looking downcast at their defeat. Especially Banyohla, who seemed to be injured and was leaning on one of his comrades for support.

  Simenon almost felt sorry for Banyohla. Almost.

  “You have won the running of the ritual as prescribed by law,” the Elder told him. “You have triumphed over your rivals.”

  The engineer liked the sound of that.

  “All you need do now,” said the Elder, “is produce the insadja’tu and complete the ceremony. Then the nest is yours.”

  The insadja’tu, Simenon thought, his mind numb and distant in the aftermath of his struggle. It was the stone his father had made for him when he was young, an exact replica of the one the Elder Simenon had carried in his own ritual victory.

  The engineer knew what he had to do. He had to present the insadja’tu to the Elder and finish what he had started. With that in mind, he fished in the interior pocket of his garment—a deep, narrow slot into which he had inserted the stone before he left the Stargazer.

  How proud his father would have been of him, he reflected. How jubilant to see his bloodline go on uninterrupted.

  It was then that Simenon’s fingers reached the bottom of his pocket—and felt nothing. Nothing at all.

  “Is something wrong?” the Elder asked.

  The engineer felt dizzy all of a sudden. Dizzy and weak in the knees. It can’t be, he thought wildly.

  “Is something wrong?” the Elder asked a little more insistently.

  Simenon swallowed and probed his pocket again. It had to be in there somewhere. Where else could it be? he asked himself, knowing full well that it could have been anywhere.

  In the underground waterway. In the crevasse. In the place where they fought off the sanjarra.

  Anywhere.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  JITERICA STUDIED THE MONITOR on the engineering console as she ran yet another diagnostic on the impulse drive. There was still a problem with the driver coil assembly, apparently. She believed she knew how to fix it. It would take some time, of course, but there was no shortage of that. According to the chronometer in her suit, she still had more than an hour and forty minutes to get the engines ready.

  “Ensign Jiterica?” said the captain’s son, who had been standing alongside her since she came down to engineering, watching her every move.

  “Yes?” Jiterica responded, though her attention remained fixed on the console.

  “What kind of being are you?” the human asked.

  “I’m a Nizhrak—a low-density being from a gas giant. You’ve probably never seen one of my people before.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “I haven’t.” A pause. “I hope you don’t think I’m being rude but . . .I’m kind of curious about your suit.”

  “Curious?” Jiterica echoed.

  “About what it does for you.”

  “I see,” she said.

  She went on to describe how the suit helped her to contain her mass, how it made it possible for her to ambulate throughout a starship, and how it facilitated periodic nourishment. When she was finished, she turned to face him.

  “Is
that what you wish to know?”

  The captain’s son nodded, his brow pinched as he absorbed the information. “That’s exactly what I wished... I mean wanted to know.”

  Assured that she had satisfied his curiosity, Jiterica returned to her work. But a moment later, she heard the human speak up again.

  “May I ask you another question?”

  She gave him permission to do so.

  “How does it feel,” he asked, “to be a biological being that has to interface with a mechanical device?”

  The ensign considered the question. “To me,” she admitted, “it feels awkward. How does it feel to you?”

  The captain’s son looked confused. “What do you mean?”

  “You interface with this ship, do you not?”

  “Well,” he said, smiling a little, “sure. But not in the same way.”

  It seemed to Jiterica that he was about to ask her another question about her interaction with the suit—something along more technological lines, perhaps. But before he could do that, she heard his father’s voice over the ship’s intercom.

  “Ensign Jiterica?” the captain said.

  “I am here,” she responded.

  “We’ve got a problem—or should I say a bigger problem. My sensor officer tells me we’re slipping into the sinkhole faster than before. I hope you’re almost done down there.”

  “How much time do we have?” the ensign asked. She didn’t think she would like the answer.

  “Twenty minutes,” the captain told her. “Tops.”

  Her prediction had been accurate. She didn’t like the answer at all.

  Picard didn’t understand.

  What in blazes was an insadja’tu? And why did it have such significance to the elder?

  He saw Simenon turn to the Gnalish in the white robe. “I can’t find it,” the engineer said, his voice uncharacteristically subdued and full of disappointment. “I must have dropped it somewhere along the way.”

  The elder’s brow furrowed above his scaly snout. “Without the insadja’tu, there can be no consummation.” He turned to Kasaelak, who was holding his head as he began to regain consciousness. “If the Aklaash has retained his insadja’tu, he may be declared the victor.”