DOOMSDAY WORLD Page 2

  Riker grinned back.

  “Ensign Crusher.” Stepping closer, Riker clapped a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “I’ve been neglecting your interest in the Kirlos project. How very selfish of me to stand in the way of your educational progress.”

  “Sir?” Wesley stirred uneasily in the Conn chair.

  “This is an excellent opportunity for you to learn, in-depth, another one of the challenges of starship management.” Glancing over his shoulder, Riker addressed Lieutenant Worf. “The ensign will be handling all further communications with the embassy.”

  “Yes, sir.” The Klingon checked the flickering lights that chased across his communications board. “Still transmitting. The amount of incoming data appears to be rather large.”

  “Well, just let the ensign know as soon as it’s all in. I’ll be in a meeting with the captain, so the bridge is yours.” With a final hearty slap to the ensign’s shoulder, Riker strode away from the helm to the captain’s ready room. Then, while waiting to be allowed through the doors, he turned back to add, “And don’t skip any of the line items, Mr. Crusher. The K’Vin are very thorough.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ensign Crusher was no longer smiling.

  * * *

  The captain’s desk had been cleared of all objects. All objects except for the small statue which Geordi La Forge set down very carefully in the center of the table. Each element of the piece was so perfectly balanced that the carving stayed erect without a base to steady it.

  Jean-Luc Picard was jolted out of his normal reticence by its beauty. He eagerly leaned forward in his chair for a closer inspection.

  The figurine was of a member of an unfamiliar humanoid race. Its compact, muscled body had been caught in motion, leaping up from a crouch. The skirts of its tunic and its long bushy tail floated in air. Picard had assumed the subject was a dancer until he saw the bared teeth set in a snarl. Its eyes were closed to narrow slits, and it had the cold look of a predator about to kill its prey.

  The predominant color of the statue was a rich orange, but it was shot through with delicate veins of green and white. The surface was so highly polished that it gleamed even in the subdued light of the ready room.

  “What is it made of?”

  “A rare form of marble called arizite,” said Geordi.

  “Yes, I’ve heard of it. But I’ve never seen it before.” The captain reached out to touch the statue, then caught himself. “May I?”

  “Be my guest,” said La Forge with an expansive wave. “When I told Professor Coleridge you were interested in archaeology, she sent it up especially for you to inspect.”

  Riker strode through the doors of the office in time to hear the engineer’s last comment. “Yes, but she left the paperwork for the transfer to me.”

  Picard was too absorbed in examining the statue to spare any attention to Riker’s entrance. The marble weighed heavily in his palm and was cool to the touch. It was also flawless. No nick or scratch marred its surface.

  “You say the ruins are full of such remains of the Ariantu culture?”

  “Oh, yes. And evidently this is just one of the minor pieces.” Geordi stepped aside to let Riker view the object in the captain’s hands. “According to Nassa . . . I mean Professor Coleridge, the gamma level of Kirlos was evacuated in a very short period of time, though we are not sure why. The result is that the resident Ariantu abandoned almost all of their possessions. In time, the excavation team should be able to re-create an incredibly detailed portrait of their day-to-day life.”

  “Ah!” sighed Picard with an envious gleam in his eyes. “I would very much like the opportunity to—”

  “Don’t even think it, Captain,” cut in Riker. “Under no circumstances are you to set foot on Kirlos.”

  Picard’s head snapped up. The blank look he gave his first officer was a sure sign of his suppressed irritation. “Really, Number One. This is carrying your concern for my safety too far. You can’t convince me that I would face the slightest danger on Kirlos.”

  “Who said anything about danger? I’m tired of filling out forms!” Riker swung one leg over the back of a chair and settled down at the desk across from the captain. “If we try to petition for the inclusion of a starship captain in the landing party, the K’Vin will want to know how many hairs there are on your head and what your mother had for breakfast the day you were born.”

  “Yes, I see,” said Picard, with a return to his previous good humor. “Well, it was but a passing thought.” However, he continued to gaze at the statue, and all that it stood for, with obvious longing. A hail from the ship’s intercom scarcely touched his thoughts.

  “Lieutenant La Forge and Lieutenant Worf, please report to sickbay for landing party physicals.”

  “On my way, Doctor,” said Geordi after a tap to his insignia. He and Riker exchanged commiserating looks, but the chief engineer had already passed beyond the threshold of the room before Picard realized he was leaving.

  “Damn. I meant to thank him for this.” Picard restored the Ariantu artifact to its place of honor on the desk, but it still held his attention. Riker rocked back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. Since he made no attempt to break the captain’s concentration, the two officers shared a companionable silence.

  With a sidelong glance at his first officer, Picard finally said, “You know, Number One, that I have full confidence in your choice of landing party members.”

  “Certainly, Captain.”

  “But you must admit,” continued Picard with studied disinterest, “that the composition of the landing party to Kirlos is a little . . . unusual.”

  The first officer nodded solemnly. “Well, that’s true. Usually the chief engineer stays aboard the ship.”

  “Granted. But in this case, Nassa Coleridge specifically requested Geordi. From what he’s told me, she was a sort of mentor to him before he decided to enter Starfleet Academy, and his VISOR will be an enormous aid to their search through the ruins. And there’s no question that Data is well suited for this type of scientific research.” Picard failed to suppress the faint trace of a smile. “But why Worf? I thought Lieutenant Keenan was scheduled for the next planet security assignment.”

  “Worf volunteered.” When Picard met this explanation with a raised eyebrow, Riker added, “Why wouldn’t a Klingon want to beam down into the middle of disputed space?”

  “Hardly disputed!” scoffed the captain. He leaned back in his chair, not quite matching Riker’s level of informality but relaxing all the same. “The K’Vin and the Federation have been camped out on Kirlos for more than thirty years without exchanging a single shot. In fact, I’ve heard that Ambassador Stephaleh and Ambassador Gregach have a standing arrangement to play dyson every week.”

  “Isn’t that a coincidence,” said Riker without any further elaboration.

  “I begin to understand.” Picard shook his head in mock disapproval. “The wages of sin. Perhaps now the lieutenant will be more careful about what games he plays with the members of his security force. And the stakes involved.”

  Riker covered his grin by absently stroking his beard. “You can bet on it, Captain.”

  Dr. Beverly Crusher placed the tip of a hypo against the side of Worf’s neck and listened for the telltale hiss of the injection. Almost immediately, Worf started to get up from the diagnostic table, but she hauled him back in place. It was harder to do than she’d expected. Not a reassuring discovery.

  “I’ll let you know when I’m done, Lieutenant Worf.” The doctor calmly dialed another medication setting even though a sound like distant thunder reverberated from deep in the Klingon’s chest.

  Geordi waited patiently for his fellow officer. “Why all the inoculations?”

  “Just a precaution,” said Crusher, triggering another injection. “A large number of alien races are crowded together down in the tunnels of Kirlos. Biofilters may keep existing strains of contaminants from reaching the settlement, but there’s alwa
ys a chance you could pick up a newly mutated virus. This will give you a broader base of immunity.”

  Then, most unfortunately, she added, “Actually, my best advice is for you both to stay well hydrated and to stay cool. According to the Federation embassy’s medical records, most of the fatalities on the planet are from heat exhaustion.”

  “That is the death of a beast of burden!” cried out Worf, speaking for the first time since entering sickbay.

  The ominous rumbling sound rose up from his chest to his throat. Crusher could feel the vibrations in her fingers when she touched the metal cylinder to his neck a third time. In a well-meaning attempt to distract him from the final injection, the doctor asked, “I thought Keenan was scheduled for this assignment.”

  The Klingon snarled, flashing a large white incisor from beneath a curled lip.

  Crusher stepped back from her patient, nearly dropping the empty hypo to the floor of sickbay, but she still managed to say with some dignity, “You can go now, Lieutenant.”

  Chief O’Brien clung to the controls of the transporter with the white-knuckled desperation of a drowning man. Like most transporter operators who had grown accustomed to the job, he liked a steady ebb and flow of traffic through his domain. There was a certain vulnerability to his position, tied as he was to a duty post in a small room, that made him wary of prolonged interactions with the crew. On this particular occasion, however, Lieutenant Commander Data had arrived well in advance of the other members of the landing party, and he displayed no inclination to wait for his companions in silence.

  “And what is even more interesting,” continued Data, warming to the subject he had introduced soon after his entrance to the transporter room, “is that when these magnetic and rotational characteristics are considered in the light of recent spectrographic examinations of the substratum formations, the congruences indicate that Kirlos is an artificially constructed planet. Unfortunately, this still does not explain . . .”

  Data halted his narrative in midstream. There was something very familiar about the look in Chief O’Brien’s eyes. Captain Picard often developed a similar expression just prior to requesting that Data cease speaking.

  “Do you perhaps wish to say something at this point?” asked the android.

  O’Brien started, as if waking from a dazed sleep. “No, sir,” he said, with what Data considered a rather odd emphasis on the disparity in their rank. “I can’t think of anything that would be appropriate to say at this time.”

  Data was still puzzling over the somewhat ambiguous wording of this response when the doors to the transporter room hissed apart.

  “I envy you, Data,” said Geordi as he and Worf walked inside. “You don’t need to stop by sickbay before going on an away mission.”

  “That is correct,” acknowledged Data, turning his attention away from O’Brien’s comment with some reluctance. “However, I have undergone minor adjustments to my thermostatic controls. According to my research on Kirlos, even in the tunnels we will be exposed to daytime temperatures of . . .”

  He stopped talking. His head swung back and forth as he tracked Geordi’s waving hand. “What is the significance of that gesture?”

  “It means ‘not now,’ Data.” Geordi broke into a friendly grin. “Don’t worry. I’ll explain later.”

  “Ah. Thank you.” Satisfied with this promise of future enlightenment, Data followed Worf.

  “Transporter coordinates laid in,” announced O’Brien as he scanned the control panel readings. His fingers tapped out the first steps of the molecular transfer process. “By the way, I thought Keenan was scheduled for this assignment.”

  The small chamber seemed to amplify Worf’s growl. He glared at O’Brien as Geordi took his place on the platform.

  The transporter chief triggered the beam-down process. “Good-bye, gentlemen.”

  The landing party faded away in a glittering cloud of yellow light. Then, and only then, did O’Brien smile.

  Chapter Two

  “IT’S YOUR MOVE, GREGACH,” Stephaleh said softly. She always said things softly; it was her way, and had been for all of her fifty-three years. A soft voice—backed by a will of iron.

  It had been a full life for Stephaleh, one that was quietly winding down with this assignment as ambassador to Kirlos. Her time on the man-made world passed pleasantly these days, highlighted by evenings like this one, spent playing games of skill with her K’Vin counterpart, the gruff Ambassador Gregach.

  She looked across the table at her opponent. Gregach sat slumped in his seat, both hands gripping the armrests.

  He was typical of the K’Vin, a large, slow-moving people with thick, gray skin. Of course, Gregach was a little heavier than the average K’Vin, but he was also leading a rather sedentary life. His extra weight made his small green eyes appear even smaller than they actually were.

  Stephaleh had always been fascinated by the pair of small tusks that jutted out from Gregach’s jawbones—also typical of his race, a reminder of the K’Vin’s predatory nature, a caution that they were a people to be reckoned with.

  Nearly a hundred years ago, the K’Vin had joined the United Federation of Planets. But it had never been a match made in heaven. The K’Vin were too fierce, with too great an appetite for interfering in the affairs of other worlds—including those protected by the Prime Directive.

  Unable to see eye to eye with the rest of the Federation, the K’Vin had severed all official ties with that august body and gone their own way. But they had left one bridge unburned—the embassy they maintained on the divided world of Kirlos.

  “Gregach?”

  “Mm?”

  “It’s your turn, Ambassador. Again.”

  “So it is.”

  He always brooded over the game of dyson, and she had often suggested that they strike it from their evenings together. But he always waved away the suggestion and insisted that they play.

  Gregach shook his head. It wasn’t necessarily a difficult game, he told himself, just one that required a great deal of thought. All he had to do was pick a length of tubing, straight or curved, from the box before him and place it in his construct, which was distinguished by his usual deep purple, in contrast to Stephaleh’s pale yellow. The idea was to complete a sphere before one’s adversary. However, each player was allowed to usurp the other’s construct, at which time the tubing would shift in hue to that of its new owner.

  Taking a nearly finished sphere away from Stephaleh, he snorted in triumph. However, as he watched, she countered with a maneuver that spoiled his other sphere. Seeing his limited possibilities, he sulked as he perused the playing area in a new and dimmer light. It was becoming obvious that she was going to win . . . again.

  Gregach looked at Stephaleh and wondered what it was about the Andorian that made him feel so comfortable with her—comfortable enough to suffer defeat after defeat in this game and still maintain his good humor. Certainly it was not a rapport based on similarities.

  While his race, the K’Vin, were short and heavyset, Stephaleh was an Andorian—therefore tall and graceful. Even in her advanced years, Stephaleh seemed perfectly poised and able to manage even the most strenuous of gymnastic moves while her lined light-blue visage showed few wrinkles.

  On the other hand, age was beginning to exercise its claim to her. Her antennae had begun to droop the slightest bit, and the white hair atop her head was thinning somewhat, although it took someone who knew her well to notice the change.

  When she had arrived on Kirlos some three years ago, Stephaleh had made the first overture by inviting Gregach for a meal. To his surprise, she had researched his people and served an excellent dinner featuring grilled inlati, a spicy fish native to the K’Vin homeworld. That very night, she had suggested they play a game. One game had become another, and then another. After three years, their games had provided countless hours of entertainment for them both.

  Gregach didn’t fool himself. She was here for her last assignment before
retirement—or death—and didn’t want trouble. Winning him over quickly was a masterful stroke and one he didn’t mind a bit. His own career might have been stalled by this posting, but he was determined to enjoy it as best he could.

  Besides, Stephaleh was far more stimulating company than the fellow soldiers he had brought with him—disappointed men, for the most part, who merely wanted to drink each night into oblivion. If he’d had to depend on them for interesting conversation or witty jokes, his existence on Kirlos would have been a good deal grimmer.

  Tonight it was his turn to dine at the Federation embassy. It was a taller building than the one that housed the K’Vin embassy—fine for his Andorian friend, but Gregach preferred being low to the ground. At least the dining room was on the ground floor, and the dusk meal was always hot and ready when he arrived.

  He never brought a retinue, preferring candid conversation and gossip with Stephaleh. She was an excellent hostess, always anticipating her guest’s needs. She seemed to know when he was suffering from a cold or exhaustion and planned the evening accordingly.

  “Gregach?”

  He roused himself from his reverie. “Yes, yes, I know.”

  He selected a curved piece and placed it in his third construct, completing one hemisphere. It looked odd in the light, coming up from the round table they used. The edges of the construct twinkled, and the rest seemed to just absorb the illumination.

  “There,” he said at last.

  “Thank you. I was beginning to drop off,” she jested. In turn, she considered the constructs before her. One, the sphere stolen from Gregach, was the most promising. It needed a completed main axis before the circle could be closed.

  Removing a straight piece from her box, she studied it. It was starting to show wear from so much use, she noted. Then she placed it inside the sphere, finishing the axis.

  “I will have you in one move, Ambassador,” she announced with a smile.