Star Trek (3 page)

T
he huge, hairy Miradorn threw his arms around S.C.E. cultural specialist Carol Abramowitz and hugged her tightly against him. His name was Brag-Ret, and his jolliness was rather overwhelming.

“
Welcome
to New Mirada!” His voice was deep and resonant as the notes from a tuba. “
Already
your presence has made this a
brighter
and more
beautiful
world!”

“Thanks,” said Carol as Brag-Ret rolled her from side to side over his great, spongy gut. She winced at his cologne and the wiry bloom of blue-green hair tickling her face and neck; the hair seemed to be part beard and part chest hair bursting from the wide open collar of his purple and pink striped shirt.

Brag-Ret held on to Carol for one moment more than she thought was absolutely necessary, then unclamped his beefy arms from around her. “And as if
fate
had not
blessed
us enough already,” he said, turning toward
da Vinci
Chief of Security Domenica Corsi, “
another
extraordinary beauty walks among us this
glorious
day!”

As Brag-Ret opened his arms wide for another embrace and took a step toward Corsi, she fired a warning glare in his direction. Brag-Ret hesitated, cocking his head appraisingly to one side.

Fortunately, Carol was able to catch Corsi's eye before an interplanetary incident ensued. Carol gave Corsi her best “please-just-let-the-big-smelly-manhug-you” look, raising her eyebrows and nodding emphatically.

It was enough, though Corsi shot Carol a dark “I'll-get-you-for-this” look over Brag-Ret's shoulder as he hugged her.

Carol shrugged in reply. She had beamed to the surface of New Mirada with Corsi and Betazoid security officer Rennan Konya to take the temperature of pro-Federation efforts among the Miradorn. Starfleet was intensely interested in how the onetime Dominion allies were shaping up, especially given their world's strategic importance. Why alienate the big, hairy welcome wagon in the first five minutes of the visit? Brag-Ret could yet provide valuable insight into recent developments on New Mirada, in which case the hugs from hell were a small price to pay.

Still, when Brag-Ret's female twin, Sog-Ret, lumbered into the room and headed straight for Carol with arms spread wide, Carol had second thoughts. She suddenly decided that she would rather be on New Mirada's moon, Zasharu, helping Gomez defuse deadly Jem'Hadar booby traps.

“
Welcome,
travelers!” said Sog-Ret, her voice shrill and sharp like the caw of a crow. “We
delight
in your
magnificent
presence!”

As she wrapped her thick arms around Carol and hugged the breath right out of her, Carol noticed two things about Sog-Ret.

One, her perfume was even stronger and more sickening than Brag-Ret's cologne.

Two, her beard and chest hair were thicker than Brag-Ret's.

Interesting choices for the welcome wagon,
thought Carol, turning her head away from Sog-Ret to try to catch a breath.

It was then, as Sog-Ret bounced her up and down over her monstrous breasts and stomach, that it occurred to Carol that perhaps Brag-Ret and Sog-Ret did not represent the welcome wagon after all.

J
ust as Em-Lin walked through the arched doorway leading into the shrine, her feet left the floor. A startled gasp escaped her as she floated upward, drifting toward the distant, vaulted ceiling.

Instinctively, she twisted and fumbled for a handhold or foothold, finally hooking the toe of her work-boot under a sconce alongside the doorway. Swinging around, she clamped both hands onto a statue of Yolo, the Phylosian disciple of Ho'nig, which was mounted on the wall.

It was only then, as she hugged Yolo tightly and had a look around, that Em-Lin realized that she was not the only person floating in the shrine. Several beings in Starfleet uniforms and two Miradorn priests had also left the floor. Like Em-Lin, the Starfleeters stayed in one place by hanging on to something, but the priests drifted upward with no sign of stopping.

“Little help, anyone?” said Pika Ven-Sa, who was one of the ones not holding on to anything. His gray robes billowed around him as he slowly ascended, revealing the bright yellow garment underneath.

“Why don't we just beam out of here?”

Near Ven-Sa, a Starfleet male with dark skin crouched on a stone railing, holding on with both hands. “The Dominion shielding is disrupting our transporters,” he said, watching the rising priest.

“Yet another wonderful booby trap,” said another man in a Starfleet uniform. This man had lighter skin than the other man and dark hair. He clung to one of the sixteen pillars ringing the altar in the center of the shrine, pillars representing the sixteen Hearts and Holy Worlds of Ho'nig. “Nothing like an antigravity field to give you a lift.”

“And a drop when it runs out of juice,” said a black-haired Starfleet woman who was clinging to another of the pillars.

Em-Lin tightened her grip on the statue of Yolo. The thought of gravity suddenly returning and dragging her down hard made her acutely uncomfortable.

So did the sight of so many Starfleet uniforms, actually. Em-Lin knew it was politically incorrect, but her time in the service of the Dominion had left her with lingering dislike and distrust of Starfleet and the Federation. They had been the enemy during the war, after all, and she and her world had been poisoned against them. In addition, Em-Lin knew people who had suffered because of Starfleet actions during the war—and she herself, though strictly a noncombatant, had seen firsthand what Starfleet personnel could be capable of, at least in time of war. She knew that she would never forget her experience at the Rasha Nom depot, a Starfleet attack that had left her and Or-Lin as two of only three survivors out of twenty-four Miradorn.

Em-Lin would have to work with these Starfleeters, and she would find a way to act professional at all times when dealing with them, but she knew in her heart that she could not truly embrace them. In that way, she was on the same wavelength as the rest of her people, contrary to the overblown displays of Federation love designed to bring much needed aid to the depressed economy of New Mirada and Zasharu.

“How long will the effect last?” said the black-haired Starfleet woman on the pillar, directing the question to the two figures working in the altar space below her.

A diminutive, pale-skinned Starfleeter with a high, bald head worked in a rectangle of blinking circuitry set into the silver altar. “Two-and-a-half more minutes,” said the little man, his hands flying over the flickering circuits. “The effect will steadily intensify, then cut out completely at the end of that time.”

“Not good!” said Ven-Sa, still drifting upward. “Not exactly what I wanted to hear!”

“Any chance of a more gradual letdown?” said the black-haired woman.

“Working on it,” said the little man. He shifted to one side, and Em-Lin saw a blue, multilegged shape beneath him. At first, she thought that it was his lower body, but as she continued to watch, she realized that the shape was not part of him at all. In fact, the little man was actually sitting on top of what looked like some kind of device or creature. It was hard to tell from a distance. His legs were wrapped around it, and it seemed to be keeping him from floating away.

A flutter of movement caught Em-Lin's eye, and she turned her head to see Pika Chi-Sa falling up against the ceiling of a side chamber not far from her. The ceiling was about five meters above the floor, and Chi-Sa ended up stuck flat against it.

“Just for the record,” said Chi-Sa, his voice echoing through the shrine, “I never wanted to join the Dominion to begin with.”

“Not what you said at the time,” Ven-Sa said curtly. Em-Lin noticed an edge of panic in his voice as he continued to climb toward the peak of the main chamber's ceiling.

Suddenly, then, Ven-Sa gasped as he dropped ten meters and stopped. In the side chamber across the shrine, Chi-Sa also fell the same distance and froze in midair.

“What's up, Soloman?” said the black-haired woman on the pillar.

“Or down, as the case may be,” said the Starfleeter with the light skin and dark hair.

“A…‘hiccup' in the system,” said the little bald man at the altar panel. Apparently, his name was “Soloman.” “I'm trying to reprogram the device to let everyone down gently, but it's not being very cooperative.”

“Why should this one be any easier to deal with than the first five?” said the dark-haired man. “My favorite so far was number three, the heat-seeking, flying buzzsaw.”

“We're just lucky no one's been killed yet,” said the black-haired woman. “That buzzsaw came pretty close to lopping your head off, Fabian.”

“For such a one-track-minded bunch of sourpusses, the Dominion sure get creative with their booby traps,” said Fabian, the dark-haired man.

“I'll try to warn you next time the…hiccup!” said Soloman.

Suddenly, Ven-Sa and Chi-Sa dropped three more meters, then shot straight up again. Chi-Sa's climb stopped when he slammed into the ceiling of the side chamber. Em-Lin heard a loud crack, and Chi-Sa howled in pain.

Ven-Sa stopped when he hit the ceiling, too, but his ceiling was four stories up, at the highest point of the shrine. He was pinned there, looking straight down, his back stuck against the very mural that Em-Lin had been in the process of restoring when all this began.

In other words, when Or-Lin died.

As if the mere thought of Or-Lin had been enough to conjure her from the dead, Em-Lin heard her voice in her right ear at that moment. It sounded as clear as day, as clear as it had every time her dead twin sister had spoken to her since the explosion.

Let go,
said Or-Lin's voice.
I love you and I will protect you.

Em-Lin shivered and held on more tightly to the statue of Yolo. She knew that her dead twin's advice was no good. She knew further that the Or-Lin who kept appearing to her, speaking to her, and touching her—but never two of those at the same time—was a
dugo tenya,
or trauma-induced hallucination.

Still, the voice unhinged her. As much as she knew intellectually that it belonged to a phantom, she could not quell her emotional response of intense, unreasoning fear.

And longing. Longing to reunite with the one whom she had lost.

More accurately, the half of herself that she had lost.

Please let go,
said Or-Lin.
I love you and I miss you.

“I miss you, too,” whispered Em-Lin, but she did not release her hold on the statue.

Fortunately, then, she was distracted by the voices of the others in the shrine. The
living
others.

“How much time till the device deactivates?” said the black-haired woman clinging to the pillar.

“Thirty seconds,” said Soloman. Em-Lin noticed that in spite of the stress that he must be under, his voice remained calm and matter-of-fact. “But I have an idea. I'm going to try a different approach.”

“Please make it a quick one!” Ven-Sa shouted from the distant ceiling of the chamber.

“This circuitry is morphic,” said Soloman, “and so is the programming. It continually changes to circumvent attempted disruptions.” His fingers danced so fast across the flickering panel that Em-Lin could not follow their movements. “I need to insert my own changeling applet and fool the system into thinking the new program is from the same parent as itself.”

“You can do that?” said Chi-Sa.

“Either I can,” said Soloman, “or I can't.”

“He can,” said Fabian. “You better believe he can.”

Soloman's fingers continued to fly. “Wait!” he said, leaning closer to the open panel. “I was in a sandbox the whole time!”

“Sandbox?” said Chi-Sa.

“A subsystem partitioned from the main program,” said Soloman. “Firewalled all around and completely nonfunctional…but I'm tunneling through to the real system, and…everybody hold on tight!”

“Hold on to
what
?” said Ven-Sa, his voice high and wild with panic.

Em-Lin felt herself grow slightly heavier. Far above, Ven-Sa slowly fell away from the ceiling and drifted downward as if he barely weighed more than the air around him.

“It's working!” said Chi-Sa, also floating down from his high perch.

“I told you he could do it,” said Fabian.

“Great job, Soloman,” said the black-haired woman.

“Actually, Commander Gomez,” said Soloman, “I have some bad news.”

“What is it?” said Gomez.

“I seem to have triggered some kind of failsafe,” said Soloman. He turned, and Em-Lin realized for the first time that the blue, multilegged shape underneath him had a face. “Once this applet has run its course, I believe that all the remaining booby traps in and around the shrine of Ho'nig will activate at the same time.”

“This ought to make life interesting,” said Fabian.

“To say the least,” said the blue creature under Soloman. Its voice was high and bright and echoed through the shrine like tinkling bells rung by Pika priests during a holy ceremony.

“Vance,” said Gomez. “Call in Soan. In fact, bring in your whole team. Miradorn security will have to maintain the perimeter.”

“Yes, sir,” said Vance, the dark-skinned man on the stone railing.

“Everybody stay sharp,” said Gomez. “All hell is about to break loose.”

“Again,” said Fabian.

“I hope you won't mind if I excuse myself,” said Ven-Sa, who was midway to the floor by now. “I just remembered, I have an important appointment in a few minutes.”

“Coincidentally,” said Chi-Sa, “so do I.”