Glass Empires

by Various

  “Do it,” she told Selar. Let’s get this over with.

  The Vulcan uncapped the vial and tipped it onto the Cardassian’s neck. A slimy black larva, about two centimeters in length, dropped onto the guard’s neck, eliciting a shudder that shook the doomed soldier from head to toe. Squeezing his eyes shut, he looked away from the thing on his neck, unable to bear the sight of it oozing across his flesh. Tears streaked his scaly face.

  And the worst was still to come….

  The fearsome Ceti eels had been discovered on a barren planet in the Mutara Sector. The Alliance had attempted to set up a prison camp there before discovering that Ceti Alpha V was not entirely uninhabited. Dozens of prisoners, as well as several guards and the warden, had perished before someone finally trapped a specimen of their killer.

  “Ugh!” Bagro exclaimed. His snout wrinkled in disgust as he pulled his head away from the creature climbing his prisoner’s throat. “I can’t believe we’re actually doing this!”

  He gave us no choice, Vash thought.

  The parasitic organisms were actually mollusks, not eels, but in their larval forms they resembled small black eels and so the designation had stuck. Officially, the Alliance had declared the planet off-limits and the species exterminated, but in reality the black market supported a thriving trade in the disgusting larvae, due to the eels’ unique effect on the humanoid nervous system. They were particularly popular among slavers and assassins.

  Vash watched in horrified fascination as the slimy larva wriggled up the Cardie’s segmented throat, leaving a trail of mucus behind it. The creature disappeared in the right ear of the guard, who convulsed in pain as the eel burrowed its way into his brain, wrapping itself around his cerebral cortex. He started to scream, but Selar clamped her hand down over his mouth, muffling his agonized cry. Dark blood trickled from the punctured ear.

  “How soon will it take effect?” Vash asked Selar, feeling sick to her stomach. She had heard about this process, of course, but she had never actually witnessed it with her own eyes before. Her hand instinctively covered her own ear. She had no doubt that the eel would be playing a starring role in her nightmares for weeks to come.

  “That depends on the species of the host,” Selar explained. With her free hand, she tucked the empty vial back into the pouch on her suit. “It should not be long.”

  The Vulcan’s predictions were as accurate as ever. Within moments, the Cardassian’s writhing body ceased its futile struggle. His arms drooped limply and his face went slack. Glassy eyes possessed all the animation of a Klingon mind-sifter casualty. Selar cautiously removed her hand from the man’s mouth, but the guard did not cry out. His jaw sagged open. A thin thread of drool dripped from the corner of his mouth.

  “I believe he is ready,” Selar announced. She nodded at Bagro. “You may release him.”

  The Tellarite gratefully let go of the prisoner. He backed away from the Cardassian, putting plenty of floor space between himself and the eel’s new host. “By the Holy Trough,” he murmured in a hushed tone. Stubby fingers traced a Tellarite religious symbol in the air. “This is an abomination!”

  Vash didn’t argue the point. But it was one she was willing to take advantage of for the sake of the Resistance. Lowering her rifle, she walked right up to the lobotomized guard. “The code!” she demanded, getting down to business. “What is the code?”

  As the survivors of the prison camp had eventually discovered, humanoids whose brains were infected by a larval eel soon became highly suggestible, lacking any will of their own. It was this peculiar side effect that had made the eels so sought after by the more unscrupulous inhabitants of the galaxy. Vash had heard rumors of secret Alliance nurseries where the mind-controlling eels were bred in mass quantities….

  “Code?” the soldier echoed. He sounded confused and disoriented, as if he barely knew his own name. A chill wormed down Vash’s spine as she pondered whether, on some level, the infected prisoner knew what was happening to him. She hoped not, for his sake. “But…the code is secret…top secret….”

  Was it possible that the sentry hadn’t even known the code to the door he was guarding? Had they committed this unspeakable atrocity for no purpose?

  No. Vash wouldn’t let that be true. She glanced hurriedly at the insignia on the guard’s uniform. “Lieutenant!” she barked, doing her best impression of an impatient Cardassian commander. She shouted in the man’s face. “Stand and report. The entrance code…now!”

  He snapped to attention. The classified info spilled haltingly from his lips: “Security code…trimega…zero…one…zero…two…delta…four….”

  “Is that it?” Vash made him repeat the code one more time before committing it to memory. That’s enough, she decided. I’m ending this now. “That’s enough, Selar. You know what to do.”

  “Indeed.” The Vulcan reached out for the Cardassian’s neck once more. Betraying a touch of squeamishness, her skilled fingers carefully avoided the mucus trail left by the eel’s passage. The entranced guard offered no resistance as she firmly gripped his throat and twisted her wrist just so. His neck snapped with an audible crack.

  Tal-shaya, Vash observed, nodding in recognition. The technique had once been considered a merciful form of execution on ancient Vulcan, and was currently enjoying a comeback among the Resistance’s Vulcan operatives. Vash admired its efficiency…and relative painlessness.

  There was no known cure for a Ceti eel infestation. The unco-operative guard had been a dead man from the moment the parasite had first entered his ear canal. Selar’s death grip had spared him from progressive brain damage, dementia, and death.

  He owes her one.

  Once again, Selar lowered her victim to the ground, this time for good. Anxious to put this sickening experience behind her, Vash turned and walked toward the sealed door. Let’s see if all that was worth it.

  “Watch out!” Bagro shouted fearfully. He almost tripped over his own bomb in his haste to get away from the soldier’s body. Genuine terror raised his voice several octaves. “It’s loose!”

  Vash glanced back at the corpse on the floor. Something stirred beneath his head and she watched, nauseated, as the eel larva abandoned its lifeless host. Bloody mucus coated the parasite as it slid out of the guard’s ear onto the floor of the cavern. It oozed across the ground in search of a fresh brain to inhabit.

  Forget that, she thought. “Stand back.” She blasted the eel with the guard’s own rifle. It burst into flame, dissolving into a puddle of steaming protoplasm. She gagged on the smell.

  Bagro let out a gasp of relief, then glared at Selar. “Where in slop did you get that vile thing anyway?”

  “I have my sources,” she replied cryptically.

  “Where?” he accused her. “The Black Sty of Acherron?”

  Vash called the discussion short. “We can compare shopping tips later. Right now we still have a job to do.”

  She entered the code into the keypad by the door. Trimega zero one zero two delta four. Holding her breath, she stepped back to see what happened next.

  “Code received,” a computerized voice announced. Concealed mechanisms engaged, and the thick steel hatch swung outward, revealing a lighted chamber beyond. “Access granted.”

  Gripping her newly acquired disruptor rifle, Vash stepped quickly through the doorway. “Nobody move!” she ordered anyone who might be inside the chamber, but her warning was greeted only by a series of electronic beeps. Looking around, she instantly determined that the vault was empty except for a single device resting in the center of the room. Blinking lights accompanied the beeps emanating from the machine, which was in the form of a vertical cylinder about a meter in height.

  She gazed about in confusion at the bare white walls surrounding her. This was it? The modest chamber looked like nothing she had expected. Where were the teams of evil biochemists at work? Where were the test tubes and beakers and chromosome splicers, not to mention the brewing vats of genocidal terror? What sor
t of underground germ warfare plant was this?

  Bagro followed her into the chamber, carrying his volatile knapsack in front of him. His ruddy face looked just as baffled as hers. “I don’t get it.” He scratched his thick beard in confusion as Selar entered after him. “Are we in the right place?”

  Good question, Vash thought. A dreadful suspicion dawned within her. Raising the tricorder, she scanned the blinking steel cylinder. Sure enough, the device was emitting the subspace signals that had lured them here, but there wasn’t a hint of metagenic research to be seen. She pressed a power switch on the cylinder, and the incriminating theta band emissions vanished without a trace.

  There could be only one explanation.

  “It’s a trap!” she blurted.

  And we walked right into it!

  Without warning, the steel hatch slammed shut behind them, trapping them inside. A hissing sound alerted Vash to another threat, and she looked up to see thick white fumes entering the chamber via vents in the ceiling. She felt a numbing sensation at the back of her throat and recognized the narcotizing effect of anesthezine gas.

  The cowardly spoonheads were trying to drug them.

  “Cover your mouths and noses! Try not to inhale the fumes!” She tugged the collar of her camo suit up over the bottom half of her face. Such measures would only buy them a few extra moments of consciousness, she knew; they had to get out of there fast. Setting the disruptor rifle on maximum power, she took aim at the closed hatchway and pulled the trigger.

  An incandescent purple beam struck the steel door head-on, then ricocheted back into the chamber. Vash and her teammates dived out of the way as the reflected disruptor blast hit the decoy theta band emitter, which was instantly vaporized. Vash felt a momentary burst of heat against her skin.

  So much for that idea, she realized. Obviously, the gleaming door was shielded by some kind of ablative coating. The gleaming metal wasn’t even scorched.

  By now, the anesthezine vapors were rapidly filling up the chamber. Vash heard Selar and Bagro coughing and choking behind her. The burly Tellarite was tottering unsteadily upon his feet, while Selar, supporting herself against the rear wall, was already sliding down toward the floor.

  Vash knew how they felt. She was starting to feel pretty woozy herself. Her vision blurred before her. Her legs felt like over-cooked Argelian pasta.

  Don’t cave in, she told herself vehemently. That’s just what the Cardies want.

  Her bleary eyes zeroed in on the backpack in Bagro’s hands. Without pausing to consider the consequences, she staggered toward him and wrenched the bundle away from him. A few wobbly steps carried her over to the exit, where she wedged the pack up against the base of the hatch. “Take cover!” she hollered through the fabric over her mouth. She backed away from the door as far as she could go. Unslinging the rifle once more, she fixed the pack in the weapon’s sights.

  Here’s hoping Bagro whipped up one hell of a bomb.

  “Fire in the hole!” She turned her face away from her target and fired the disruptor.

  A deafening explosion knocked her off her feet. Tumbling across the floor, she rolled herself up into a ball and covered her ears with her hands. The force of the explosion brutally threw her against a wall. The jarring impact bulldozed the breath from her lungs. She felt as if she’d been hit by a runaway shuttlecraft.

  “Vash!” Rough hands shook her to see if she was still alive. She heard Bagro panting in her ear. “Vash, can you hear me?”

  “Barely,” she croaked. Her head and ears were still ringing from the thunderous detonation. She wanted to curl up and sleep until the twenty-fifth century, but knew that wasn’t really an option. Where are those old-fashioned cryo-suspension tubes now that I need them? Bagro helped her climb painfully to her feet, and she turned to inspect her handiwork.

  The blast had nearly torn the steel hatch off its hinges. The anesthezine escaped through the open gap, making it easier to breathe. As her head began to clear, she wiped the soot from her face and nodded at the doorway. Every bone and muscle in her body ached, and she knew that she was going to be black and blue tomorrow, assuming she survived the next few hours. “Get a move on!” she ordered. There was no way that the bad guys weren’t coming for them, especially after that explosion. “Run for it!”

  Ducking beneath the awkwardly hanging door, they rushed into the tunnel outside. A disruptor blast tore into a stone column only a few centimeters from Vash’s head, peppering her face with bits of powdered granite. A mixed band of Klingon and Cardassian soldiers came storming down the corridor toward them. Searchlights were mounted to the barrels of their rifles.

  “Weapons on stun!” a scaly Cardassian glinn shouted at the warriors. “The gul wants them alive!”

  Vash was less picky. Taking refuge behind the chipped stone column, she fired back at the soldiers. Her rifle was definitely not set on stun. The glinn fell over backward, a smoking hole in his chest. Vash smiled wolfishly.

  One down.

  A full-fledged firefight erupted in the subterranean intersection. The air hummed with the sizzle of opposing disruptor beams, even as the last wisps of anesthezine dispersed through the adjacent tunnels and shafts. Hiding behind a nearby wall, Bagro and Selar added their fire to their leader’s, temporarily holding the Alliance troops at bay.

  “Come and get us, you tuskless butchers!” Bagro bellowed. His disruptor blasts fired wildly at their foes. “You face a true son of Tellar this day. You’ll never take me alive!”

  Cool under fire, Selar picked out her targets with more precision. “That is undeniably an outcome to be avoided,” she observed.

  Vash admired their spirit, but knew they couldn’t hold out for long. She heard the pounding boots of more guards coming their way. They had to make a break for it now, before they were hopelessly surrounded and outnumbered. She signaled the others to go first, then let loose a massive barrage of disruptor beams to cover their retreat.

  “Go!”

  The two rebels sprinted from their refuge toward the outer tunnels. Bagro galloped with surprising speed, but Selar, weakened by the gas, moved a trifle too slowly. A Klingon beam winged her in the leg and she crumpled to the ground. Bagro heard her cry out in pain. He swore and turned around to retrieve her. The bulky Tellarite scooped Selar up and heaved her over his shoulder before resuming his dash for safety. Red and purple beams zipped past him, missing him and Selar by mere centimeters.

  He disappeared into a murky side tunnel. Vash took a deep breath, committed her body and soul to the inscrutable gods of probability, and launched herself after him. She fired back over her shoulder at the pursuing guards. A Klingon warrior, of Amazonian proportions, hit the dirt. Running soldiers tripped over her fallen body, slowing their progress. Vash extended her lead by a couple of meters and darted into the same tunnel as her friends.

  She switched on the searchlight attached to her own rifle. The sudden illumination showed her Bagro up ahead, with Selar still slung over his shoulder. The wounded Vulcan watched the Tellarite’s back, aiming her disruptor back the way they had come. Recognizing Vash behind them, she wisely refrained from firing.

  “Keep going!” Vash shouted. “Don’t wait for me!” Gaining on the encumbered Tellarite, she had caught up with them just as they emerged from the tunnel into yet another confusing intersection. A variety of escape routes presented themselves. “Just pick one and run.” Vile threats and racing footsteps echoed from the tunnel behind them. “They’re right on our tail!”

  Then, unexpectedly, their enemies were in front of them as well. Rifles blazing, two more guards burst from an archway several meters ahead of them. Before any of the rebels could react, a disruptor beam stunned Bagro, who collapsed in a heap on the floor, taking Selar with him. The woman’s weapon went flying from her hand.

  “Bagro!” Vash nailed the Tellarite’s attacker with a purple beam right between his eyes, but the second guard took shelter behind a fountain-sized stalagmite. Think you’re
safe now? she thought vindictively. Lifting her gaze, she fired her rifle at a corresponding stalactite directly above the hidden guard. The blast dislodged the jagged stone spear, which plunged down onto the soldier. A geyser of dark Cardassian blood sprayed up from behind the stalagmite.

  Think again.

  Over on the floor of the intersection, Selar struggled to untangle herself from Bagro’s limp body. The smell of charred Vulcan flesh wafted from the ugly green disruptor burn on her leg. Ignoring her own pain, she checked Bagro’s pulse.

  “Is he still alive?” Vash called out. She nervously eyed the mouth of the tunnel they had just left. The other guards sounded as if they’d be here at any moment.

  “Yes,” Selar reported, “but that doesn’t matter.” She gave Vash a piercing look. “You must eliminate us before you complete your escape.”

  “What?” Vash knew what the other woman meant, but she didn’t want to admit it. “Are you insane?”

  “It is the only way,” Selar said calmly. “For all our sakes, you cannot allow us to be interrogated by the Alliance.” She might have been talking about deleting an inconvenient computer file for all the emotion she displayed. “The needs of the Resistance outweigh any personal considerations.”

  The disruptor rifle in Vash’s arms suddenly weighed a ton. “I can’t,” she insisted. “Don’t ask me to do it.” A narrow side tunnel beckoned to her, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave her fellow freedom fighters behind, alive or otherwise. “I signed up to kill our enemies, not my allies!”

  Selar shook her head in disappointment. “Terrans! You weren’t so softhearted when your ancestors conquered my people.” She crawled toward her lost disruptor, dragging her injured leg behind her. She left a trail of glistening green blood in her wake. Her fingers groped for the weapon, which lay amid a pile of rubble just beyond her reach. “Flee then. I’ll attend to matters myself.”

  Inching forward, her fingers finally fell upon the disruptor’s outer casing.

  A crimson beam struck from the darkness, stunning her before she could kill either Bagro or herself. Selar’s head dropped onto the floor of the cavern.