Star Trek: The Q Continuum (32 page)

“Deanna!” Dr. Crusher shouted. To Milo’s relief, the doctor shoved her way past him to attend to her friend. Taking Troi’s pulse with one hand, she immediately administered some sort of counteragent via her own hypospray. The antidote took effect almost instantly; Milo was glad to see Troi’s breathing begin to slow. She looked like she was stabilizing now, thanks to Dr. Crusher’s prompt response.
Praise the Holy Rings,
Milo thought, grateful that his father had not actually killed the counselor.

Lem Faal had not lingered to view the consequences of his actions, or to wait for a security officer to show up. Peering through the bustle of sickbay, Milo spotted his father disappearing through the double doors that led to the corridor outside. Milo chased after him, his oversized boots slowing him down more than he liked. Still occupied with the stricken counselor, Dr. Crusher did nothing to stop him from threading his way toward the exit. The doors swished open in front of him and he was free of sickbay when an unexpected hand grabbed onto his collar, dragging him back into the ward. “And where do you think you are going, young man?” a voice said sternly.

It was the bald-headed doctor, the one who didn’t register on Milo’s empathic senses. He eyed Milo dubiously, keeping a firm hold on the boy’s collar. “I’m afraid no one is released from sickbay until they’ve been given a clean bill of health by a qualified health care professional.”

“But my father!” Milo said, looking frantically at the exit as the doors slid shut again.

“First things first,” the doctor insisted. “We’ll deal with your father’s appalling breach of protocol later. First we need to return you to the pediatric ward.”

Milo had a vision of cortical stimulators being applied to his forehead and tried to free himself from the doctor’s grip.
What’s going to happen to my dad if I’m out cold?
All the doctors and nurses were too busy to bring his father back to sickbay before the ship entered the barrier.
It’s up to me to save Dad,
Milo thought. “Let me go!” he yelled, but the bald doctor only tightened his grip. He was surprisingly strong.

“No!” Dr. Crusher ordered the other physician. With one arm wrapped around Counselor Troi to steady her, the ship’s chief medical officer had clearly taken notice of Milo’s near escape. “Don’t let him get away,” she instructed her colleague.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied archly, “even if my behavioral parameters included dreaming.” Milo wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but the doctor sure wasn’t letting go of him anytime soon. He was about to give up when the whole sickbay shook like a malfunctioning turbolift.
The cloud monsters,
Milo guessed.
They must be trying to stop the
Enterprise
from going into the barrier.

“Crusher to Security,” the doctor said, tapping the badge on her chest. Obviously, she intended to send Security after Milo’s father. The badge emitted a high-pitched whine, however, which was clearly not what Dr. Crusher had expected. “What the devil? There’s something wrong with the com system.”

The overhead lights flickered and, to Milo’s surprise, so did the doctor holding his collar.
He’s a hologram,
the boy realized, taking advantage of the doctor’s momentary instability to break free and run for the exit. “Stop!” the hologram cried, and tried to seize Milo again, but his immaterial fingers passed uselessly through the fleeing child. “You haven’t been discharged yet!” He glanced back at Dr. Crusher, then shrugged helplessly. “Don’t look at me.
I’m
not responsible for unexpected power fluctuations. This is all Engineering’s fault.”

Milo barely heard the holo-doctor’s excuses. As the sickbay doors whished shut behind him, he found himself confronted with a three-way intersection—and no sign of his father.
He can’t have gone far,
he thought, silently blaming the hologram for slowing him down,
but which way did he go?
Milo searched telepathically for his father, but could not sense his presence anywhere.
He must be blocking me out,
he realized. Frustrated, he tried to guess where his father would want to go next.

Engineering, of course, and his equipment. Hadn’t he tried to convince Ensign Daniels to take him to Engineering in the first place? Milo scanned the adjacent corridors for the nearest turbolift entrance, then raced down the left-hand hallway. Maybe he could still catch his father before…what? Milo had no idea what exactly he hoped to accomplish. He only knew that he had to do
something
before his father did anything terrible to himself.

Or someone else.

Glevi ut Sov, Empress of Tkon, awoke one morning in the second year of her reign, during the latter days of the Age of Xora, with a feeling of unaccountable unease. There was a wrongness afoot, if not with her, then with the empire she hoped to rule wisely and well for many decades to come. Rising to a sitting position upon the couch, propped up by numerous soft cushions, each embroidered with the sacred emblem of the Endless Flame, she listened carefully to the silence of the early morning. Had any alarm or summons disturbed her dreams, calling her to cope with one emergency or another? No, the quiet of her private chambers was quite unbroken. Nothing had roused her except her own premonitions.

Hooves pawing the ground.
…A fragment of a dream flashed through her memory.
Curved horns stabbing at the sky.
For an instant she could almost recall the entire dream, but then the memory slipped away, banished from her consciousness by the dawn of waking. What had she been dreaming again?

She rubbed her golden eyes with the back of her hand, wiping away the dried residue of slumber, stretched luxuriously, and deftly lowered her bare feet into a pair of fur-lined slippers resting on the floor. She could have commanded any number of attendants to help her rise and prepare for her duties, but she preferred to look after herself. Soon enough today, affairs of state would demand her attention for the remainder of her waking hours; for now, the beginning of each day remained her own.

The subdued night glow of the opaque crystal walls faded automatically as elegant chandeliers flooded the chambers with light, highlighting the intricate colored patterns of the antique Taguan carpet upon the floor. The empress paid little attention to the ornate designs of the rug, which had been in her family since her great-grandfather’s time. Her shadow preceded her as she stepped away from the couch, the hem of her silk gown trailing upon the carpet. A translucent screen, upon which was printed a copper representation of the flame emblem, descended silently from the ceiling, sealing off the imperial bedchamber from the forefront of her quarters. Her desk, carved from the finest D’Arsay teak, awaited her, as did her favorite chair.

The outer rooms felt chilly this morning. “Warmer,” she stated simply, “by, oh, seven and a half grades.” Her technologists assured her that someday soon it would no longer be necessary to actually speak aloud to their homes and offices; the new psisensitive technology now being developed in labs throughout the empire would allow one to direct any and all instrumentality by thought alone. She frowned at the notion, not entirely sure she liked the idea of her palace knowing what she was thinking.

Yawning, she sat down in her chair. The room was already feeling warmer and more comfortable, but, despite the reassuring tranquillity of her chambers, she could not shake the ominous mood with which she had woken. She searched her memory, trying to bring to light any disturbing dream that might have left her spirit troubled, yet no such nightmare came to mind. As far as she recalled, her sleep had been soothing and unruffled until the very moment she came awake.

From where, then, had come this persistent sense of impending danger? “Show me the city,” she said to the smooth, crystalline wall facing her and, like a window opening upon the world outside the palace, a panoramic view of a sprawling metropolis appeared on the wall, providing the empress with a live image of Ozari-thul, capital city of the great world Tkon, center of the Empire of the Endless Flame.

Resting her chin in her palm, she gazed out upon the city, her city, seeing nothing that would account for her anxious presentiments. Ozari-thul at dawn looked nearly as placid as her chambers, the vast majority of the city’s twelve million inhabitants not yet stirring from their homes. Graceful towers, winding like crystal corkscrews, pierced the morning sky, while ribbons of interlocking roadways guided a few scattered vehicles on postnocturnal errands throughout the city. The blazing sun rose to the south, and she could not help noticing how much larger and redder it seemed now than it had in the not-so-long-ago days of childhood. That so swollen a sun should actually be
cooler
than it had once been struck her as paradoxical, but her scientists assured her that was indeed the case, and certainly the changing weather patterns of the last few years had borne their theories out.

Is that it?
she wondered. Was her knowledge of the geriatric sun’s eventual fate coloring her perceptions of the morning? That seemed unlikely. She had known about the long-term threat posed by their sun for years now, since even before she assumed the throne after her mother’s death. Besides, the empire’s finest scientists all agreed that the expansion of the sun, as that familiar yellow orb evolved into what the physicists called a red goliath, would not engulf the homeworld, as well as the rest of the inner planets, for several centuries. More than time enough for the Great Endeavor to come to their rescue—or was it?

She felt a stab of hunger, prompting her to ask for her breakfast, which instantly materialized on her desk: a beaker of hot tea and a plate of toasted biscuits, with
susu
jam and just a dab of imported Bajoran honey. Frankly, she would have liked more honey, but it wasn’t worth the scolding she would receive from the court nutritionists, who fretted about the foreign sweeteners in the delicious amber spread. It was her duty, after all, to keep her mind and body fit, although she sometimes wondered what was the good of being empress if she couldn’t even have an extra dollop of honey now and then.

A tinted crystal disk was embedded in the top of the teak desk. Washing down a tiny bite of biscuit with a sip of moderately spiced tea, she gazed at the disk and called up the most recent report on the progress of the Great Endeavor. Dates and figures scrolled past her eyes; as always, she was impressed by the sheer, unprecedented scale of the project, as well as the enormous expense. To literally move the sun itself out of the solar system, then to replace it with a younger star taken from an uninhabited system light-years away…had any other species
anywhere
ever attempted such a feat? Only to preserve Tkon itself, the sacred birthplace of their people, would she even dream of undertaking so colossal an enterprise. Small wonder her nerves were jittery.

And yet…according to this report, the Endeavor was proceeding on schedule and only slightly over budget. If necessary, she would bankrupt the imperial treasury to save the planet, but that drastic a sacrifice did not seem to be called for at present. Work was continuing apace on the solar transporter stations, their prospective new sun had not yet displayed any serious irregularities, and everything appeared to be in order. If all went according to plan, they would be ready to attempt the substitution within her lifetime. The Endeavor was no more risky today than it had been the day before, so why did she feel so perturbed?

With a word or two, she cleared the crystal viewing disk and called for her first minister. The image of an older man, seen from the waist up, appeared at once within the crystal. From the look of him, Rhosan arOx had already been at work for an hour or so. A ceremonial cloak of office was draped over his shoulders and his graying hair was neatly groomed. His cheeks had a healthy violet hue, which reassured her more than she wanted to admit.
He looks like he can manage affairs for many more years,
the empress thought,
just as he did for Mother.
“Good morning, Most Elevated,” he said. “How can I help you?”

“Nothing too urgent,” she replied, reluctant to burden him with her indistinct worries. “I was merely interested in…well, the state of the empire.”

The vertical slits of his pupils widened their golden irises. “If I may take the liberty of asking, is something troubling you, Most Elevated?”

He’s still as perceptive as he ever was,
she thought. “It is most likely nothing,” she assured him. “I feel…fretful…this morning, for no apparent reason. The foolish fancies of an inexperienced empress, most likely.”

“I doubt that,” he said promptly, “but I will be happy to allay your cares by informing you what I know.” His gaze dropped to the surface of his own desk; over the last several months, he had taken over an increasingly larger share of her executive duties, freeing her to concentrate on the Great Endeavor. “Let’s see. Labor negotiations with the Diffractors’ Guild are dragging on, the United Sons and Daughters of Bastu are protesting the latest interplanetary tariffs, the Organians turned back our envoy again, and some fool politician on one of the outer worlds—Rzom, I believe—is refusing to pay his taxes, claiming the Great Endeavor is, quote, ‘a sham and a hoax,’ end quote, making him redundant as well as a damn idiot.” Rhosan looked up from his data display. “Just the usual headaches, in other words. Nothing that should cause you excess concern.”

“I see,” the empress said, her tea and biscuits getting cold. “Thank you for your concise summary of the issues at hand. I don’t believe any of the matters you mentioned could be the source of my thus far baseless apprehensions. Please forgive me for disturbing your work with such a nebulous complaint.”

“It was no trouble,” he insisted. “I hope I was able to put your mind to rest.”

“Perhaps,” she said diplomatically. “In any event, you may return to your numerous other responsibilities.” Governing an empire of seven trillion inhabitants was no small task, as she well knew. “I shall see you later today, at the Fathoming Ceremony.”

“Until then,” the first minister acknowledged, dipping his head as she closed the connection. The crystal disk went blank.
If only I could dismiss my qualms so easily,
she mused. None of the routine difficulties Rhosan had alluded to justified the sense of dread that cast an inauspicious cloud over each passing moment. She raised her teacup to her lips, hoping the warmth of the tea would dispel the chill from her soul, but knowing in her heart that there was no easy balm for the doubts and fears that afflicted her.

A design etched onto both cup and plate caught her eye. The Endless Flame, ancient symbol of the empire since time immemorial. In olden days, she recalled, now lost in the haze of myth and legend, her primal ancestors were said to have been prophets, mystics, and seers. Their visions, according to archaic lore, had proven instrumental in the founding of the dynasty. Those distant days were long departed now, and subsequent rulers had required no such oracular prowess to guide the empire, but she couldn’t help wondering, amid the miraculous technology of their modern age, if the blood of seers still flowed through her veins. Would her eldest forebears have recognized this seemingly inexplicable anxiety, this puzzling tremor in her psyche and spirit?

A single shard of memory lodged in her mind, less than a heartbeat in duration. A barely recalled sliver of a dream about…hooves?

Something
terrible
was coming, of that she was convinced.

“Comfortable, confident, trapped by tradition, enamored of their own hallowed history, and drunk with delusions of destiny,” 0 sneered at the mighty Tkon Empire. “They’re perfect, Q! I couldn’t have chosen any better.”

Five attentive entities, plus two more whose presence was unknown to the others, watched the planet Tkon spin beneath them, no larger than a toy globe compared to the scale on which Q and the others currently manifested themselves. From their lofty vantage point, several million kilometers above the world where the young empress dwelt, they could see a swarm of satellites, artificial and otherwise, orbiting the central planet. Tkon was the fourth planet in its system, and its influence spread outward in an expanding sphere of imperial hegemony that encompassed colonies on both the inner and outer worlds of its own solar system as well as distant outposts lit by the glow of alien stars. Tkon’s defenses, based on those same satellites, colonies, and outposts, were formidable enough to discourage aggression from the barbarian races who lurked beyond the outermost reaches of the empire. 0 and his cohorts, on the other hand, couldn’t have cared less about Tkon’s vast military resources.

“Actually,” the young Q said, “I’ve always considered the Tkon a civilizing factor in this region of the galaxy.” He was starting to regret suggesting the Tkon Empire in the first place. What kind of testing did 0 have in mind? Nothing too severe, he hoped. “Their accomplishments in the arts and sciences, although aboriginal by our standards, naturally, are laudable enough on their own terms. I’m particularly fond of the satirical profile-poems of the late Cimi era—”

“Q, Q, Q,” 0 interrupted, shaking his head. “You’re missing the point. It’s these creatures’ primitive progress that makes them the ideal test subjects for our experiments. Where’s the sport in testing some backward species that can barely split an atom, let alone synthesize antimatter? That would be a total waste of our time and abilities.” He scowled at the thought before turning his mind toward brighter prospects. “These Tkon, on the other hand, are just perfect. Not too primitive, not too powerful. They’re hovering at the cusp of true greatness, waiting for someone like us to come along to push them to the next level…if they’re able.”

“Precisely,” Gorgan agreed. He licked his lips in anticipation. “I can already see some intriguing possibilities for them.”

“In
them,” Q corrected, assuming the other was referring to the Tkon’s potential as a species.

Gorgan shrugged. “As you prefer.”

“They have grown overproud and must be humbled,” The One pronounced. “They must drink bitter waters before they face My Judgment.”

(*) merely flashed through pulsating shades of crimson, awaiting 0’s command. A Tkon starship, en route to the eleventh planet in the home system with a crew complement of one thousand two hundred and five, approached the gathered immortals. Although traveling over twenty times the speed of light, it seemed to Q to be crawling toward them, and not much larger than an Organian dovebeetle. Despite, or perhaps because of, the difference in scale between the gleaming vessel and the immaterial onlookers, the ship remained unaware of Q and the others even as it came within their proximity. It glided between Q and 0, who nonchalantly reached out and swatted the miniature spacecraft away, sending it tumbling through space and into the hard red radiance of (*).