Go To Part Eight
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Tristan Vale sat next to his captain’s bedside in the coma ward. On the small table next to the bed lay four non-functioning communicators. He had partially disassembled two of them. Vale looked up as Lindstrom came by for a report.
The lieutenant shook his head. “I’ve never seen damage like this before.”
“That bad?” the director seemed surprised.
“Are the malfunctions consistent with previous attacks?”
“We don’t usually carry hand units,” Lindstrom replied. “We’ve had so many incidents of theft recently. So I can’t think of any prior cases right off hand.”
“Theft?” Vale frowned. “On another planet, I could understand that the equipment would have enough re-sale value to be tempting, but I thought the native population here looked on alien technology as a complete anathema.”
“They do,” the director confirmed. “We’ve speculated that some radical group is paying bounties on Federation tech just so they can have the satisfaction of destroying it. We occasionally find remnants of disassembled units.”
“The destructive force directed at these communicators was… remarkable.” The lieutenant picked up one of the disassembled units to underline his point. “Their primary processing crystals are blown.”
Lindstrom looked at him a little blankly. “Oh?”
“Yes.” Vale realized in that moment that he had become a little spoiled working under Sulu. His captain would neither need nor want an elaboration on the significance of what the lieutenant was trying to tell him. His agile mind would be leaping forward to possibilities and solutions at this point.
“Vale, I’m a Social Science guy. If I flip a switch and a unit turns on, it’s a good day.” Lindstrom shook his head with an apologetic grin. “I’m perfectly happy to live in this horse and buggy world. So…?”
“Ultimately what I believe I am trying to indicate is that there may have been more than one type of beam directed towards our party. Whatever hit these communicators was very powerful. If the same type of beam had been aimed at the Captain…” Vale paused. Noel DelMonde and the Drake’s Commander had an unusually intense friendship. In spite of this closeness, at this point, the engineer would have employed some colorfully graphic term such as “cooked his brain like a Caldonian Calimari” or “fried his skull like a Phrygian fritter.” The Communications Officer’s feelings for his commanding officer were too distanced by professional admiration to allow for such lurid descriptors.
“It would have caused much more extensive damage?” the director supplied, with an appropriately bland touch.
“Yes.” Vale replaced the communicator on the table. “Such a weapon seems like an advance on technology reported from ten years ago.”
Again, this was the sort of assertion that would have sent the captain of the Drake’s mind spinning into high gear. Instead, Lindstrom merely nodded. “I suppose it does.”
“It seems surprising that the population here could develop a weapon of this level of sophistication,” the lieutenant supplied, hoping once more to nudge the director to one of Sulu’s brilliant intuitive leaps that would help untangle this problem.
“We’ve not seen any inclinations in them of that nature, no,” the other man replied, unmoved towards brilliance.
Vale bit his bottom lip, clearly seeing that any inspiration for moving forward was going to need to come from him. “You said your main communications center was out of order as well.”
“Yes. That usually happens after one of these incidents.”
The lieutenant drew in a deep breath and hoped his intuitions were leading him in the correct direction. “I think I should investigate that site.”
“Good idea. I can have a guard stationed on your captain if you like.”
“I think that would be prudent,” Vale agreed as he rose. “I hope it will be sufficient.”
“Lieutenant,” Lindstrom reproved as they moved to the exit. “From your tone, someone might think that you thought Sulu was in as much danger from my team as from the Anarchists.”
Vale frowned as he took a glance back at his captain’s unconscious form and again breathed a fervent prayer that he was making a decision his commander would bless. “Sir, they would not be entirely incorrect.”
“Oh, hell…” Noel DelMonde grimaced and held out an arm that barred his companion from proceeding further down the corridor they were traversing.
Dr. Rendell sighed deeply in annoyance. “Not again.”
“‘Fraid so,” the Cajun replied, frowning at the closed doors of the entranceway in front of them.
The doctor pushed back the hood of her borrowed robe impatiently. “How many this time?”
The engineer made a face as he took a moment to get a mental fix on the unseen assailants on the other side of walls separating them. The officers from the Drake were still several stories below surface level in the Central Administration Building that housed what was at one time Landru’s main computer complex. Their upwards progress was slowed by scattered patrols of the brown-robed Anarchists.
“I’m gonna say three,” DelMonde decided, then growled. “Damn… When I catch whatever jackass that busted every loose communicator on this planet…”
“What?” Rendell chided this display of temper. “I thought we were doing well.”
“Oh, honey, we are doin' wonderful,” the engineer assured her, readying his weapon. “Fo' a team equipped wit' not'ing but their native skills, superior wits, two tricorders, an' one an' a half phasers, we are makin' out like champs.”
The “half phaser” that the Cajun was referring to was the one welded inside a pipe-weapon the doctor had confiscated from one of the guards she had knocked out earlier.
Fearing possible unintended effects upon themselves as well as those they fired upon, the engineer had used the beam of Rendell’s phaser to slice the borolithium pipe as close to the mechanism as possible. Uncertain whether or not this alteration might entirely negate the neuro-sonic properties of the weapon, the Cajun kept it in reserve.
The Cajun also expressed a certain amount of interest in the fact that this modification of the Anarchists’ melded contraption gave them possession of the galaxy’s only “double-barreled sawed-off Phaser One.” The engineer pronounced that although the device looked like “a paranoid plumber’s feral fantasy” and probably was as “illegal as forty-‘leven types o' handcrafted sin bubblin' in a double broiler o' genocidal mischief,” it was still “cooler than this poor bastard child o' a deadly weapon an' a remote control” had any right to be.
“Yeah, we runnin' th' tables on these countrified rubes like they got both eyeballs sittin' in they back pockets,” the Cajun asserted, double-checking both the accuracy of his telepathic impressions and the configuration of the chamber beyond them with his tricorder. “Even though we outnumbered an' out-gunned, we still managin' t' be th' Big Bad Federation Wolf to their Little Brown Local Yokel Hiding Hoods.”
Rendell passed these metaphorical flourishes off with an arch of her eyebrow. “I’m going to assume that’s all to our advantage.”
“It is remarkable, darlin’,” DelMonde avowed, giving the cover of the tricorder a satisfied tap as he closed it. “You an' me are jus' cuttin' through this bunch like a hot knife through butter. We are outstandin' in this field in a truly exemplary fashion that is a credit t' us personally an' th' Service in general. However, it does keep occurrin' t' me that if only one o' th' half-dozen communicators we done run across worked fo' as much as ten seconds, I’d already be in my bunk wit' a half bottle o' bourbon in my belly congratulatin' me on a job well done – which is th' point of' progress where I feel we deserve t' be on this mission 'bout now.”
“I most heartily agree with you.” The doctor gestured sourly towards the unseen combatants beyond the wall before them. “Unfortunately those caped numbskulls in the next chamber beg to differ. Now, I believe it is your turn to play the decoy, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, uhm…” The Cajun paused and cleared his throat. “Well, 'bout that…”
“Oh, come now.” Rendell gestured impatiently towards the other chamber with her phaser. “I see no reason for you to be hesitant. After all, we’ve firmly established that these lunatics seem to be under orders not to fire upon you.”
DelMonde’s mental scans of previous attackers had revealed that some – but not all – of them were aware of his escape and had received instructions to return him unscathed back into custody.
“It not exactly them I worryin' 'bout,” the engineer began, in as close as he came to a diplomatic tone. “Not t' cast aspersions on anyone’s marksmanship, but th' last time we got in a firefight, you nearly took th' top o' my head clean off.”
“Mr. DelMonde.” Dr. Rendell frowned and crossed her arms. “Let me remind you of the following facts as you might express them in your own peculiar idiom; A) a phaser on 'stun' setting cannot remove the top – or any other part – of anyone’s head and B) I am a skilled surgeon. If I wished to slice into your cranium in order to examine the contents; – which, I must admit, has been a temptation upon numerous occasions in the past – there would be no near misses.”
“Now, look-a-here…” the Cajun remonstrated heatedly, and then suddenly broke off, looking towards the entrance of the next chamber. “Oh, wait…”
On cue, the doors slid open revealing three robed Anarchists who burst in.
Their leader shouted, “Intruders! Why do you defile….!”
However, the officers from the Drake were prepared for this incursion. DelMonde and Rendell’s momentary quarrel did not prevent them from opening fire on their attackers in perfect unison. The officers neatly stunned the lot before the brown-robed aggressors got three steps into the corridor.
“Well, that takes care o' that,” the Cajun pronounced over their unconscious forms with some satisfaction.
“When will they learn?” Rendell shook her head and then turned to the engineer so they could both quote the helpful maxim they had formulated for their enemies; “Shoot first; rebuke later.”
“This here t'ing is pretty cool.” The engineer held up his modified Phaser One admiringly as he stepped over the robed figure. “You know, a fellow might be tempted t' jus' slip this ugly li'l hunk o' junk inside his coat at th' end of a mission an' not say not'ing 'bout it.”
Rendell rolled her eyes as she followed him into the next chamber. “For research purposes, I assume.”
“Yeah, yeah, that it.” The Cajun tucked the ungainly weapon into a vest pocket with a possessive pat. “Research…”
Lindstrom turned to Tristan Vale and smiled. “Not what you expected, is it?”
The two of them were now deep within the structure the locals referred to as “the Maze.”
“I suppose not,” the lieutenant admitted. “From the name…”
“Yes.” The director turned and pressed a panel that activated soft lighting in the corridor before them. “Sounds like the place going to be something gothic – with cobwebs and spiders…”
The passage they had entered was anything but gothic. Cool tangerine and teal columns of a clean modern geometric design lined the passageway. The hall was lit by tasteful crystal panels built into the architecture. Aside from a slightly musty smell of disuse, the hallway could have easily been located in a public building in any city in the Federation.
Like a proud tour guide, Lindstrom pointed out subtle design features embedded in the columns as they passed. “These tunnels date back from what the locals call “the Time Before Landru.” We call it the “Pre-War Era” although our ethno-archeologists are still debating the dates and nature of that conflict as well as what if any role Landru might have played in what might have taken place.”
Listening to him speak about Beta III in this easy manner without the weight of his previous prevarications on him, Vale felt that he was now finally getting a sense of the Lindstrom who his captain knew and described. What had Sulu called him? A boy guide? Ranger? The sense of youthful, brash, impulsive, reckless honesty was now surfacing… A love of adventure and unending appetite for challenge… Strong sense of responsibility… Heartbreak for those he felt he had failed… Unflagging determination to right the wrongs done to them….
“In case I got you disoriented getting here, we’re a little over a half mile from the Administration Building.” The director gestured back in the direction from which they’d entered. “The old Landru Computer is located directly below that. The Maze snakes out all over Peace City like a spiderweb with the Admin Building at its core. This was one of four… I don’t know… What can we call them? Indoctrination centers? The Lawgivers had these at four cardinal points of the city. Around eight years ago, the Corps of Engineers came in and converted them into municipal works sites for us and other utilities – like this Communication Station -- our team needed to put in secure locations that the locals couldn’t access.”
“From what your Security Chief reported, there are locals who do access these tunnels,” Vale pointed out. He was careful, though, to try to keep the statement from being less of an accusation and more of a request for further clarification.
“Rani and her staff do a good job,” Lindstrom rebutted automatically, then sighed. “But, yes… The entrance is down a couple levels… And we do have problems with Anarchists trying to get down here… and just… kids. The young people who were children during Landru’s regime are teenagers now. Their parents don’t understand them – can’t relate to them. The generational divide is true everywhere throughout time, but it’s particularly acute here. Children and parents are completely alienated from one another. These young people are sad, angry, bored…”
“They look at you and your team…” Vale interpreted. “Perhaps even the Federation… as surrogate parents.”
The director nodded. “And they are very unhappy with us.”
“And that rebellion translates into… crime?”
“And other destructive and self-destructive behaviors.” Lindstrom shook his head and frowned. “We need to do more for them…. More than picnics and plays and…”
“Drugs?” the lieutenant supplied more sharply than he intended.
“Yeah.” Lindstrom did not flinch from his complicity in this problem. “Whether or not I ever get back my funding… 'Independent' traders be damned… We have to figure out a way to give these kids more direction… more to live for… if this planet is going to have any kind of future.” The director paused, a bit embarrassed by the force of his own emotional response. He gestured to the passageway before them. “Well, the facility is down this corridor…”
He and Vale had only traveled a dozen or so steps in that direction, when the lieutenant suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.
Lindstrom turned to him. “Vale?”
Usually Indiians only received impressions of emotion from close range. There were exceptions to this rule, though. Frightening, sickening exceptions…
“What is it?” the director asked, puzzled.
Vale, unfortunately, immediately recognized the sensation – a rescue mission when he had been an ensign… One didn’t forget experiences like that. He put a finger to his lips and an arm out to keep Lindstrom from moving any closer. “You’ve not been down here in a long time, have you, sir?”
“No. It’s probably been awhile.” The director lowered his voice and began to look about him for the source of the trouble. “This is all solid state stuff. Runs like a top – unless the Anarchists pull something… And Rani takes care of that.”
“Your Security Chief -- She doesn’t know we’re here, does she?” Vale conjectured, gesturing the director towards a less exposed position near the wall.
“I didn’t bother to tell the guard -- No. Just said we’d be back in an hour.”
“But Ms. Bachchan usually tracks your movements?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way. After the Anarchist attack on Tula… She became very protective.” Lindstrom frowned at the suddenly suspicious darkness at the end of the corridor. “What’s this about?”
“Are you carrying a phaser, sir?” the lieutenant asked, drawing his.
“No. It’s too dangerous. We have a lot of thefts. For years now, we don’t carry phasers, hand communicators, or tricorders any more unless it’s for something very specific.”
“This is something very specific, sir,” Vale assured him grimly, drawing an extra weapon from an inner pocket in his coat. “Here is Captain Sulu’s phaser. I assume you remember how to use one.”
Lindstrom straightened. “I am a still a Star Fleet officer, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Vale.” The director placed a hand on the lieutenant’s arm. “What are we walking into?”
The Indiian took a deep breath as he pressed the button that would open the doors separating them from the next chamber. “Something terrible.”
Lieutenant Saravelos turned at the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside the psych ward where he was on guard duty. He opened the door and peered outside just in time to catch a glimpse of someone in a dark blue dress disappearing around the far corner of the hallway.
Another person, who had apparently been stationed on the other side of the door, took advantage of his divided attention in order to quickly grasp him in a headlock from behind and press a weapon to his temple.
“Aw’ right, fellow,” this assailant growled. “You jus' hold right still now. Where have ya’ll got that other Archon?”
Immediately recognizing the unmistakable accent of one of the officers from the Drake, Saravelos asked, “Do you mean Lieutenant Vale, sir?”
“Oh…” DelMonde immediately released the guard, turned him around, and brushed his shoulders off apologetically. “Oh... Oh, I’m so sorry, son. I not pause t' t'ink you might be one oo us. Yes, where is Lieutenant Vale?”
“He and the Director left together,” Saravelos explained. “They didn’t say where they were going, but they said they’d be back in around an hour. That was around twenty minutes ago.”
The person in the blue dress had joined them by this point. She turned out to be the Drake’s medical officer, Dr. Rendell. Like DelMonde, she was wearing a brown robe and was looking rather disheveled and dusty.
“Where do you think they are?” she asked.
“I really don’t have any idea, Doctor. I wasn’t in the room when they were discussing their plans.”
“That all right, son.” DelMonde patted his shoulder reassuringly. “Lissen, we got a pack o' crazies hot on our trail. You stand guard out here. If anybody show up – sing out. Understand?”
The lieutenant nodded. “Yes, sir.”
DelMonde let Rendell precede him into the wardroom. He closed the door firmly behind them, then paused a moment and made a face before turning to the Haven forbiddingly. “You gonna say somet'ing?”
“No, indeed,” Rendell assured him pleasantly. “It has been a trying day. Commentary is completely unnecessary.”
“Good,” the Cajun replied shortly.
“We have all had our missteps and miscalculations…”
“We have.”
“I am not even going to point out that for some reason you are blushing furiously.”
The engineer sighed, seeing that the scale of his mistake was not going to be passed over lightly. “He not even a real security guard. They all got so many jobs here, they all gotta do double an' triple duty. He actually some sort o' ethnomusicologist that just done drawed guard duty.”
“Well, that is a somewhat novel circumstance,” the doctor granted magnanimously.
“From one end o' th' galaxy to the other – a cop is a cop,” the Cajun asserted vehemently, gesturing heavenward as if to call on supernatural witnesses to the eternal veracity of this assertion. “A cop gonna t'ink cop thoughts. They jus' not able t' help it. It one o' th' ways th' universe balances things out fo' th' criminal element. But this freak o' nature here is hummin' a li'l 300-year-old hymn in praise o' Landru’s axiomatic profundity inside his head an' t'inkin' 'bout th' neat way it transitions into an E minor chord jus' befo' th; bridge underlining th' melancholy o' certain specific irresolvable teleological conundrums referenced in th' first an' third verses. Now, I ask you, what in th' hell am I supposed t' make o' that?”
“Disconcerting, I grant you,” Rendell soothed, patting his arm as she led the way to a bed at the far end of the ward.
“Lord save us all if they start churnin' out them ethnomusicol-o-cops…” the engineer grumbled, following her.
“Although I am not certain what sort of danger that eventually would pose…” Rendell broke out her tricorder and hastened to her unconscious captain’s side. “At this moment, we have much, much, much bigger problems to worry about.”
“You got that right.” DelMonde looked down at his captain’s unresponsive form and sighed deeply. “It like I been tellin’ you, non? The feel o' his mind is all messed up. Somet'ing has got him completely knocked out o' his head.”
“This is somewhat different from any catatonic state I’ve ever seen,” the doctor said, examining her readings. “One might call this… a neural lock.”
“You got you a theory 'bout how we can bust loose that lock?” the engineer asked.
Rendell opened her mouth, then closed it. She did have the beginnings of a hypothesis about how they might proceed, but was hesitant about offering it. On a Haven ship, it was almost never a good idea to put forth an innovative proposal for action. Haven commanders accumulated subordinate officers primarily so that there was someone readily available to take the blame when their half-baked plans went wrong.
Broadcasting your own ideas was just suicidal.
A lovely thing about having Sulu as a commanding officer was that he was terribly intuitive. He could pick up on the good ideas a subordinate officer had and run with them. One didn’t need to commit to one’s moments of inspiration in a way that was… well, incriminating. If the notion proved good, Sulu was nicely reliable about giving credit. If not… well, he wasn’t above a little blackmail and manipulation… but then again, she wouldn’t have respected him if he couldn’t analyze a situation and take advantage of it properly. One didn’t wish for a fool for a commander, after all.
DelMonde, though, was an entirely different sort of person. Despite what his records said about him, the engineer was a bastard son of Devri himself. Rendell felt too vulnerable to share the notion she’d been nursing ever since he’d informed her he was getting anomalous sensations in his attempts to contact their captain’s mind.
Therefore she decided to reply instead with a cautious, “Do you?”
“I gonna do my damnedest,” he replied, commandeering her tricorder.
The doctor lifted an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“What?” The Cajun was already in the midst of emptying his pockets of the other improvised tools he’d collected on their adventures. “You not t'ink I serious?”
“No.” Rendell shrugged diffidently. “I simply wasn’t aware that in addition to your other dazzling accomplishments, you had a medical degree.”
“Not t' cast aspersions on your profession, cher…” The Cajun politely gestured the doctor aside as he removed the covering on the medical monitor over Sulu’s bed and placed it out of the way. “…But Star Fleet medicine has done had its shot wit' these poor folks fo' ten years now.” He turned and gave her a dazzling smile. “It high time we called in an engineer.”
There are certain emotional states in others that the Indiian mind instinctively abhors. This revulsion is not taught or the result of cultural bias – although their religion and folklore do reinforce certain categories of such strong negative reactions. The Indiian psyche shies away from the acrid, bitter sensations of these types of emotional states in others in the same manner other species are revolted by the smell of rotting or burning food. It is, perhaps, nature’s way of protecting the empathic species from situations that are potentially too dangerous or too damaging to the individual encountering them.
Tristan Vale felt he had lived a fairly fortunate life thus far. Fate had spared him from encounters with emotions that he literally wanted to vomit out of his body. There had been, though, one notable exception.
He no longer saw the faces of those four children in his dreams, but he felt their pain and bitter despair as strong as knives through his heart. They, like the little one in the chamber Vale and Lindstrom were about to enter, had been too exhausted to cry as they watched the terrorists torture their parents. Their screams were bottled inside them.
As awful as the suffering of the tortured parents was, it was the bitter, hopeless pain of the frightened, despairing, injured children that scarred Tristan’s soul. Those were the unendurable sensations that emanated from the chamber before them now.
None of the hundreds of simulations of field situations Vale had gone through could quite duplicate this sort of appalling reality. The Communications Officer drew in a deep, steadying breath. Now was the time, he knew, to lean on that training and focus on his duty. He had to repress the urge to become lost in the emotional chaos around him and let himself fall into the sort of berserker rage that his cultural traditions told him were the just fate of those who would commit such atrocities.
The parent was doing his best not to cry out under whatever his torturers were inflicting upon him. A stifled cry and a low moan were torn from him.
Beside Vale, Lindstrom stiffened as he seemed to identify the voice.
He is going to know these people, Tristan realized. He is going to immediately recognize this child. That may affect his concentration and make this rescue more difficult.
The Indiian placed his hand on the Director’s arm. “Steady,” he warned, mouthing the word, so as not to alert the people in the next room to their presence.
Lindstrom nodded grimly. “How many?” he asked silently.
In a less dire situation, Vale would have replied with a lecture about the differences between telepaths and empaths and a curt demurral to discourage this attempt to apply his sensitivities in a way in which they were not designed to function. Instead, he used the heightened emotions of the moment to extend himself around and past the suffering parent and child, seeking out signs of those upon whom vengeance was crying out to be visited.
The Indiian made a gesture to indicate that his estimate was only a guess. “Two,” he signed. “Maybe three.”
A very deep, low voice with an immediately distinctive accent purred, “No, my dear, you must watch. That’s the whole point. You must report to your mother so she can know the consequences of going back on her word.”
The child’s weary little sobs floated to them through the open doorway.
Tristan knew that echoing tears were forming in his eyes. He hastily brushed them away with the hand holding his phaser.
“You all right?” Lindstrom signed, although Vale could sense clearly that the feelings rising in his heart were those of someone longing to commit mayhem with his bare bloody hands. Both of them were far from “all right” with these circumstances.
Vale nodded, then indicated the chamber and tapped his chest. “I take the left. You take the right. Okay?”
The director nodded his assent, his face set into a mask of iron determination.
The Indiian steeled himself for whatever horror was to come, then signaled towards the doorway of the chamber. “Go!”
“Ooof!”
Noel DelMonde peered under the nearest hospital bed. “You okay, cher?”
The upper half of Lian Rendell emerged, dusty and festooned with cobwebs, rubbing the spot on her head she had just banged on a bedspring. “When we get out of this,” she warned grimly as she handed him the end of a wire. “You most definitely owe me a dinner and drinks.”
“Oh, mos' certainly, darlin’,” the Cajun pledged easily, as he attached the wire to a devise constructed in part of a repurposed lamp.
“ At a good restaurant,” the Haven specified adamantly as she shimmied out from under the bed in as dignified a manner as was possible… which was not actually all that possible…
“Oh, I agree,” the engineer assented absently as he tweaked a few settings to the contraption in his hands before snapping closed the contrived casing.
“Where kidnapping is not the final course,” Rendell warned, struggling up to her knees.
“You know,” DelMonde began jovially, as he used a chair as ladder to raise his device to the proper height to put it in parallel to the other similar contraptions he had already mounted around the ward. “I was even t'inkin' that if I write a poem 'bout this whole fiasco when we get back t' th' ship and send it off t' my agent, your story 'bout rescuin' me from them brown-robed idiots could probably be worth a couple interviews… if that’s what you was interested in… an' – who knows – maybe even a book deal if you spin it right.”
The doctor wearily moved aside the feet of the catatonic patient in the bed beside her so she could have enough room to sit. “I don’t have time to write a book.”
“Oh, my agent would get you a ghost-writer, cher,” the Cajun assured her cheerfully as he sighted the placement of his device relative to the rest of the series strung along the wall. “All you need t' do is provide th' story an' collect th' checks.”
Rendell winced as she plucked a handful of cobwebs from her irretrievably ruined coiffure. “That would be extraordinarily gracious of you and your agent.”
DelMonde paused in his work and turned to the doctor. “I was also t'inkin' that was a way you might be persuaded t' finally stop tellin' people that story 'bout how I puked on you when I was a kid.”
Rendell blinked innocently. “Now who says I do that?”
The engineer gave her a pointed look.
The doctor sighed. “Oh, I forgot about the telepathy.”
“I not have to be a telepath t' know some t'ings…” the Cajun retorted with a wounded air. He held his hand out. “So, we got ourselves a deal?”
Rendell held up a finger. “Dinner first… And the poem.”
DelMonde shook his head as he turned back to his work. “You Havens drive a hard bargain.”
“It is our justly earned reputation,” the doctor confirmed. “So explain to me again how this… uhm…”
“…Brilliantly improvised marvel o' engineering acumen?” DelMonde supplied as he stepped down from the chair.
“Truthfully, I might have been reaching for 'glittery pile of dangling junk,'” the doctor admitted, surveying the odd collection of wires and mirror-surfaced objects mounted about the room’s perimeter. “.. but I defer to your greater expertise. Could you explain to me again how it is supposed to work?”
“My theory is that whatever sent these folks into a catatonic state an' is keepin' 'em there is enhanced an' reinforced by signals bouncin' off th' borolithium crystals built into th' windows an' walls o' this room – an' all th' architecture of this city. What I have done is create a sort o' scrambler designed t' block th' problematic frequencies an' allow these folks t' return to'consciousness.”
Rendell nodded. “Sounds simple enough.”
“That is th' hallmark of a good engineerin theory.”
“Much more simple than it looks.”
“Usually my designs not always have this kind o' tinsel an' Christmas tree kind o' look,” the engineer granted, dismissing the draping wires and abundance of glittering glass with a wave of his hand. “But you gotta go wit' what gonna work. Progress ain’t always pretty, cher.”
Rendell dusted herself off and took in a deep breath. “Are we ready to give it a try?”
“I t'ink so.” DelMonde crossed to a re-purposed half-disassembled comm panel on a bedside table near Sulu. “Let me throw th' switch.”
Lights on this main assembly blinked as it hummed to life. In a rather festive manner, answering blinks twinkled across the room. The scrambler conglomerate shimmered and plinked to full life, sending playful fragments of multicolored light and peals like tiny fairy bells echoing off the borolithium fragments through the room.
“Charming,” Rendell commented, aiming her tricorder at the nearest patient, now fully encased in glittering light. “Is the device working?”
The Cajun consulted his own instruments. “Yep.”
A complaint that all of the galaxy – even its own citizens had against it – was that the Federation consistently trended towards the blandest of all cultural norms. Rendell was pleased that somehow fate had worked things out so that these anti-technological locals were awaking from their long slumbers not to the oppressive drone of soul-killingly generic Fed-tech machinery, but to a fairytale glister and trill more appropriate to such a numinous moment of revival.
Eyes glued to the tricorder, the doctor could see that some vital wave lengths in the brain function of the patient beside her were changing. She held her breath.
After reaching a certain point, though, progress began to level out short of the desired goal.
Confirming that all was not going to plan, when she looked at DelMonde, the engineer was not smiling. The Cajun was as apt as a Monolem to ostentatiously bask in the glow of his own good ideas -- even when those ideas came in part from other people. (Rendell was still kicking herself for not speaking her very similar idea about a scrambler -- and wondering how much of his inspiration had came from her mind.)
Instead of exulting in the sparkling pixie radiance of his creation, the engineer looked as dour as a Vulcan undertaker.
Rendell took the hand of the patient beside her. The old woman’s eyes stubbornly remained closed.
“Is scrambler going to take some time to take full effect?” she asked, hopefully.
“Not exactly…” DelMonde sighed and tapped the top of his improvised device reprovingly with his fist. “This jus' another poignant illustration o' th' trials o' th' life o' an engineer.”
“Is it?”
The Cajun crossed to Sulu’s bedside. “Often times when an engineer is hot on th' trail o' solvin' a problem, you find you fix one t'ing only t' figure out you got another bigger problem on your hands.”
The doctor came to the foot of their captain’s bed. “And we have a bigger problem?”
DelMonde nodded. “My scrambler device is workin' just fine. There is no physical impediment keepin' these folks from comin' back t' us.”
“Then why are they still unconscious?”
“The impediment is them.” DelMonde brushed a lock of hair back from his unconscious friend’s face fondly and then gave his cheek a reproving pinch. “It seem like these folks like th' place where they are too good t' come back t' us.”
“That would seem to be a very great difficulty.” Rendell sighed. “I don’t suppose there an engineering solution for this one...”
“Fortunately, in th' case o' this here particular engineer, there is.” DelMonde shook his head, took in a deep, reluctant breath, and positioned his fingers carefully on either side of Sulu’s face. “I just gonna have t' roll up my sleeves an' get my hands dirty…”
Sulu, like the others, felt the sudden tremor when the crystal bonds tethering them to the astral plane suddenly shook and shattered. Part of him experienced a deep melancholy at the new light freedom of his soul.
T his sweet resting time with the Children of Landru was drawing to a close. The respite had been so brief – a mere flutter of Eternity’s broad eye. Not enough time to heal wounds of the past. Not enough time to gather sufficient strength for the challenges to come.
However, he knew, it had been a time of healing and a time of gathering strength. He paused to reflect on the sweet grace of the Universe and the preciousness of such moments of tender mercy.
The return would be difficult… Not only for him, but for these Children of Landru – still unsure on their path through the Cosmos, still finding their footing of Faith. Returning back to the discord and strife of reality would be uncomfortably challenging. If only there was someone firmly tethered to the firmament that held the homes and loved ones left behind who could serve as guide on their journey back…
As if in immediate response to his wish, a bright blue soul-thread began to wind towards him.
He smiled in immediate recognition. “Beloved Companion!” he exclaimed, reaching for this dear presence. “Most Constant of Comrades and Worthy of Counselors!”
Part of Sulu laughed heartily at his friend’s dumbfounded shock at the strength that the Astral plane lent his grip -- as well as the unusual celestial grandiloquence of such a greeting. However, the blue psychic thread that reached out for him made firm contact.
Segments of Sulu began to stir and rebel at the thought of being so exposed to what was clearly a form of telepathic contact. However, using their last moments of unity, the wholeness of Sulu grabbed onto the blue thread of contact projected by their friend like a lifeline. Through it, he radiated memories of waiting family and friends to the Children of Landru.
“Come, my Beloveds!” he encouraged, following that blue psychic thread back to Jilla and the stars of home. “It is the Time of Our Return!”
Seeing around corners was a parlor trick that was the specialty of telepaths, not empaths. Therefore Tristan Vale wasn’t surprised to find his estimate of assailants was a little off. He was thankful they found only four men in the chamber, not four dozen.
There were two Orions – big, green and burly. Their dress identified them as traders. One stood by their smallest captive while the other operated the controls of the device torturing her parent.
The first blasts of Vale and Lindstrom’s phasers felled these monsters.
The others present were two natives stationed at each side of the door ostensibly to guard against just such a surprise attack. The monotony of this duty had lulled the pair into lethargy, though. Neither had his weapon at hand. The lieutenant and the director were able to turn and dispatch these guards as easily as they had stunned their masters.
“Deepika!” Lindstrom cried, running to the side of the little girl.
Vale turned to her father. “Merciful Aema!” he exclaimed, realizing that the Orion he had stunned had left the device that was causing him pain switched on.
Pushing the unconscious muscular green body off the control board, the lieutenant discovered to his horrified relief that he knew exactly how to deactivate this strange contraption.
“This is Rani Bachchan’s daughter,” Lindstrom explained, shoving the stunned body of the other Orion aside as he unstrapped the little girl from a box-y seat that looked somewhat like starship captain’s chair. “That’s her husband, Malor. Is he all right?”
“Aema, preserve us!” Vale thought. “The Security Chief’s family? None of this is all right! This is disaster upon disaster!”
Apparently the stimulation of torture was the only thing tethering Malor to consciousness. When Vale pressed the button releasing him, he crumpled to the ground. Therefore, instead of expressing his indignation, the lieutenant rushed to the native’s side.
“This isn’t a medical tricorder,” Vale explained to the director, running his pocketwatch over Malor’s limp form. “I can’t give you as many details as to what has been done to him as I would like. He is breathing. He seems to be merely unconscious at the moment.”
The little girl was sobbing now. Lindstrom took her in his lap. “Deepika and Malor have been gone for about three years. Rani told us that they were injured in an Anarchist attack in Harmony Town. She said they were in a catatonic ward there.”
“Merciful Aema…” After arranging the native man so that he was resting as comfortably as possible, Vale stood up and checked a console. “Your communication station is not malfunctioning. The main functions have been purposefully switched off. Power is being diverted to supply a neuro-sonic device improvised from a scraped comm unit and projected through those two borolithium pipes.”
“Dear Lord…”
“This man has probably been subject to neuro-sonic manipulation of his cranial nerves, causing intense pain…”
“…but little actual physical damage.”
“…which could allow the torture to go on for years.”
Lindstrom turned to the little girl. “Deepika.”
She was a small portrait of her mother, with dark hair and eyes.
“Honey, your daddy’s gonna be okay now. Understand?” The director had to give her a big hug before he could swallow the lump in his throat and continue. “You need to tell us what happened, okay?”
“I’m so scared,” the little girl replied in choked whisper, clinging to him, as Vale returned to her father.
“I know.” Lindstrom smoothed her long black hair back. “I know.”
“They want Mommy to do bad things. Terrible things.”
“What kind of things?”
The child leaned in close enough to whisper in the director’s ear. “Kill people. Kill you.”
Noel DelMonde smiled broadly as his captain’s eyes finally fluttered open.
“Hey, you.” He gave Sulu’s face a gentle pat. “There he is. There’s our big hero…”
“Excellent.” Rendell hastened to her commander’s bedside. “They’re all coming out of it now. He may be weak and disoriented at first….”
“Weak? Him? Aw, hell, no!” The Cajun playfully gripped the captain’s biceps. “Not this muscle man. Gal, you got no idea how strong this fellow we got here is. You not seen him at work like I have. Hey, Sulu, is your middle name Moses?”
The effort of just lifting his eyelids was an almost impossible task for the Drake’s captain. “Huh?”
DelMonde grinned and punched him on the arm. “‘Cause you were sure leadin' some folks up out into th' Promised Land.”
“Wha…” Sulu’s tongue seemed to be made of duranium-coated lead.
“You have to forgive him, Captain.” Rendell stepped past the engineer to administer a stimulant. “Mr. DelMonde is waxing a bit giddy at the efficacy of his contraption.”
“Mais, I must admit that my scrambler played its part in wakin' these good folks up, as did my telepathic efforts, but darlin’, you should have seen him – ten foot tall an' glowin’ like a…” DelMonde paused. Even as he spoke, his memories of his fleeting glimpses into the astral plane melted away into the insubstantial meaninglessness of a day-old dream. “Hmm… Maybe I am giddy…”
“We need to get the regular staff in here,” the doctor said, handing the engineer a hypo. “Stimulants need to be administered generally.”
“If what I t'ink has happened has done happened,” the Cajun replied, crossing to the next bed to give the neighboring groggy patient a shot, “th' regular staff has got they hands full.”
Rendell frowned, but did not pause in tending to her patient. “You mean, even without deploying your scrambler…?”
The Cajun suddenly straightened in a manner that had become all too familiar during their struggle to rejoin their colleagues. “Oh hell…”
“Not now,” the doctor begged.
“Yes, th' fuckin'-fuck now,” DelMonde fumed, casting aside the hypo and groping through his tools for his modified Phaser One. “Lian, grab your gun, gal, an' go tell that ethnomusico-lo-cop we got a crazy burnin' their way towards us like hell on wheels.”
“Shades of shambling Saford!” the Haven swore, patting down her voluminous skirts. “Where is the confounded thing?”
“Del, help me up.” Sulu weakly tried to lift himself to his elbows. “Get me out of this bed.”
The engineer looked back and forth between the captain and the unseen approaching attacker for a second, then nodded.
“Yeah, son, we gotta get you out o' here,” he replied, bending and supporting Sulu up to a seated position. “I not know who this woman is, but you one o' th' primary ones she gunnin' fo'.”
In the corridor outside the ward there was the sound of running feet and then a shout.
“Halt! Oh, ma’am, it’s you… Wait… Why are you…?”
A phaser whined. There was the sound of a body dropping to the floor.
T he Haven paused in her search of a bedside table to shoot a look at the Cajun. “I presume that was our guard.”
“He much better at bein' an ethno-musicologist if that any comfort,” Delmonde replied, trying to keep the semi-recumbent Sulu from collapsing back onto the bed. “You findin' that phaser?”
The doctor hastily turned back to her frantic search. “I know I put it…”
The door to the ward burst open. A disheveled dark-haired woman stepped in, carrying a phaser in either hand. Her sudden, violent entrance elicited screams from several of the recently recovered patients in the beds nearest the entryway.
“Rani! Rani!” Several of them cried out. “Rani! No!”
“Rani?” a voice called weakly from one of the beds near the back of the ward.
DelMonde could see and feel recognition of the patient hit the gunwoman like a thunderbolt out of the blue.
The phasers shook in the dark-haired woman’s hands. “Tula?”
The telepath seized on this moment of surprise.
“Now hold on, girl!” DelMonde cautioned the gunwoman, willing her attention on him as he carefully positioned his body so it blocked her line of fire on Sulu. He held up a hand in a commanding gesture. “Hold on! Take a minute! Take a minute!”
“Rani!” the gunwoman’s friend Tula cried out, horrified and appalled at her actions.
The dark-haired woman was visibly shaking. DelMonde could feel her struggling to gather her nerve for the terrible thing she felt she must do.
“What’s going on here?” she demanded with a savagery she did not feel.
Behind the engineer, Sulu was struggling to rise enough to participate usefully. Resisting the urge to give his friend a good left cross to put him out again, DelMonde instead spread his arms to hopefully keep his captain obscured from the would-be assassin’s view.
“See how all your friends has done woke up?” the engineer said, gesturing expansively. “Th' whole situation has changed. Take a minute t' take it in, gal!”
The gunwoman seemed frozen, paralyzed. Her thoughts, though, were racing.
DelMonde decidedly did not like the track down which those raging reflections were running.
“You do not want t' do what you t'inkin' 'bout!” the telepath assured her, holding up both hands in a “halt” gesture. Willing her to focus on his gaze – and especially not on Dr. Rendell, who he knew had fingertips just inches away from her phaser at this moment – he made his voice soft and gentle as he moved his hands slowly downwards. “Just take a minute! Take a minute!”
Del could feel hesitation start to take root in her. This was good. He knew she lacked full commitment on doing the thing she had come here to do. If he could work that doubt just a little longer…
“Rani…” an agonized sob broke from one of her friends. “Please, no…”
This interruption broke whatever spell the Cajun had been able to weave.
“Nobody move!” The gunwoman swung her phasers in Dr. Rendell’s direction. “All of you, stay where I can see you! Everyone stop moving! Stop talking!”
“Rani,” one of the natives pleaded. “what be you doing?”
“You not want t' do this, girl,” the engineer insisted, desperately trying to draw attention back to his side of the ward. “Look at your friends. You not want t' do this.”
“What I want doesn’t matter anymore,” the gunwoman snarled, but tears stood in her eyes.
“Oh, yes, it do,” the Cajun affirmed adamantly. “What you want right now might matter more 'an any other moment in your life, girl.”
“Rani,” said a calm baritone voice from the bed beside him. “Don’t make the wrong decision.”
DelMonde turned to find that Sulu had somehow propped himself up to a half-seated position. The captain was now making firm eye contact with his would-be executioner.
“Shit,” the Cajun murmured, easing one arm protectively backwards.
However, there was still astral plane energy radiating off the Drake’s commander. Some of supernatural strength Del had glimpsed in his friend in that other realm still had resonance within him. The telepath could sense how the tenor of his captain’s challenge awakened deep feelings about noble responsibilities within the dark-haired woman – powerful emotions concerning duty, honor, and self-sacrifice…
“Uh-oh…” The Cajun moved closer to his captain, knowing this last point was a potentially treacherous one. Self-sacrifice could push the gunwoman over the edge as easily as it could pull her back from the brink. She might just decide that the most honorable thing was to go through with the deal with her devils in order to save whoever she was protecting.
The engineer’s breath caught in his throat as he saw the corners of her mouth twitch into a frown and her wrists begin to rise into a firing position.
Time went into slow motion as he threw his arm around Sulu and pulled him back towards the bed, again putting his body between the gunwoman and her target. He hoped that the block would at least surprise her enough to give them a reset – another chance to talk. If she hit them both with a disintegrate setting… well, c’est la guerre. No one could say he hadn’t tried his best…
Squeezing his eyes closed and waiting for that phaser whine, with Sulu clutched tight against him, Del instead heard the click-click-click of little feet running and a little angel voice calling, “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”
“Sweet… Baby…Lord… Jesus… Thank you!” DelMonde slowly breathed.
“Del,” Sulu choked. “Del... Let me go…”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” the Cajun replied, releasing his friend and brushing him off as casually as possible.
The gunwoman was now on her knees holding a little girl and sobbing. Tristan Vale, Lindstrom, and squad of security guards were holding weapons on her.
“Arne!” a pretty, dark-haired woman in one of the beds called.
Pure sunshine dawned on the director’s face. “Tula!”
As the couple reunited with a rapturous kiss, Dr. Rendell crossed to Sulu’s bed.
The Haven gestured apologetically towards Bachchan with the phaser that she had finally managed to lay hands upon. “I suppose I needn’t shoot her now.”
The engineer gave his partner in misadventures a conciliatory pat on the shoulder. “Not unless you jus' want to run up your body count fo' th' day, Deadeye.”
“One doesn’t wish to appear too vainglorious about such accomplishments.” Rendell smiled as she discreetly returned her weapon to its hidden holster. She then broke out a hypo from a nearby bedside table. “Perhaps it would be more prudent for me to go see what I can do to revive our ethnomusicologist guard.”
“Rest that trigger finger, honey,” the Cajun advised, climbing up a chair to check on the alignment of his scrambler array. “We not home yet.”
“Something tells me the logs for this mission are going to make very interesting reading,” Sulu commented, half to himself.
“Oh, we done workin' on a book deal,” DelMonde informed him, making a minor adjustment.
“And a good dinner,” Rendell reminded the Cajun without turning around. “And a poem.”
Sulu lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re making deals with Havens…”
“Aw’right.” DelMonde shrugged. “I won’t tell ya. You jus' have t' buy th' book like ever'one else.”
As members of her own Security team led Bachchan and her daughter away, people from the community began to stream into the ward, rapturously greeting their newly awakened friends and relatives. The officers of the Drake were soon surrounded by weeping natives sharing heart-felt embraces.
“Captain!” Tristan Vale cried, finally making his way to his commander’s side. “Are you all right?”
“I think so.” Sulu was now feeling clear-headed enough to not only sit up under his own power, but even touch his feet to the floor. He gave the lieutenant a smile. “I hesitate to say it, but I think we finally may have the situation on this planet under control, Vale.”
“Oh, Lord, why you gotta go spoutin' off crazy shit like that fo'?” DelMonde growled, augmenting a segment of his scrambler with another string of wire. “Now we doomed t' never get off this backwards-ass hellhole…”