Heresy 46

Tylha

"Vice Admiral sh'Shohl," the short, fussy-looking civilian greets me as I step out of the pneumo-car.

"Just Shohl," I mutter. I've never been one for this fad of decorating names with extraneous particles.

He smiles at me a bit uncertainly. "I am Technical Director Thyr'Usarien ch'Tholas," he says. Well, I suppose it takes all sorts. "I have been deputized to set your mind at ease regarding the security arrangements."

"Thank you," I say. Behind me, the door to the pneumo-car hisses shut. The bullet-shaped vehicles travel in pressurized tubes, all the way around Storm Command. This one took me from the reception centre - which had a satisfying number of watchful armed guards - all the way up the side of the old mountain, and then under the curving dome, to... this place.

"Central Overwatch," ch'Tholas tells me, "is, as its name implies, the monitoring station at the centre of Storm Command. Of course, most of our monitoring is done via remote sensors, but we like to have visual confirmation, sometimes... I hope the transparent flooring doesn't disconcert you."

"Only a little," I say, trying not to look down. The Central Overwatch station hangs like a giant chandelier from the underside of the duranium dome, pneumo-car tubes stretching out from it, six spaced evenly around its rim, and one more in the exact centre going down - down, down, down....

"How high up are we?" I ask, and ch'Tholas chuckles.

"The floor of the crater is... about six kilometres beneath us. Of course, if you fell, you would never reach it... beneath us is a series of hypercompressed convection vortices. Essentially, miniature hurricanes, which feed into the main vortex generators at the rim of the dome... their contents, ultimately, being released through the vents at the rim of the facility, to travel upwards and modify the planetary jet streams."

"So, if I fell... that's what would happen to me?"

"You would ultimately fall as snow over some wide area of our planet. I think it's rather poetic, in a way." He leads me across the transparent floor to one of the consoles that are spaced evenly about this single large room. Poetic?

"The cells are largely self-perpetuating, but there is a modicum of control - mainly from force-field generators and tractor beams. The actual floor of the facility is a zone of relative calm - it's where we have most of the heavy machinery mounted, including the primary generator. Central Overwatch is here just to... watch." Ch'Tholas sits down in front of a console. "Now, then. Security."

I can't help myself: I look down. Beneath my feet, transparent aluminium - and, beneath that, nothing but a churning mass of white mists, lit from beneath and the sides, where the vents are spaced around the huge protective dome. The mists swirl endlessly, and I seem to see patterns in them, patterns ever-changing, shifting constantly from one half-glimpse of intricate symmetry to another.... Ch'Tholas is saying something.

"I'm sorry?"

He laughs. "It gets most of us that way, at first! The patterns are fractal in complexity, and quite hypnotic. - I was saying; reports come in here from the eighteen defensive towers in the outer ring... you will have seen those, I think."

A ring of modern developments now surrounds the base of the mountain, a technological city incorporating laboratories, more modern weather control systems - and the defense installations ch'Tholas is talking about. "They look suitably formidable," I say. I glance upwards. "And the shield dome...."

"Is not just for show, I do assure you. It has a practical purpose besides protection - it encloses the facility so the upper layers of our vortices do not mix with the outer atmosphere. We pride ourselves that nothing happens to Andoria's air unless we plan it."

Ch'Tholas seems completely unconcerned by the churning void beneath us. I suppose he must be used to it - I suppose it's possible to get used to anything, given time. Still, I can't help but notice Central Overwatch is nearly deserted - just me, ch'Tholas, and a couple of technicians at another console.

"In a way," ch'Tholas says, "it's unfortunate that you picked today for your visit. The vortex cells beneath us are fully loaded with nucleogenic particles - a heavy snowfall is planned for Andoria as a whole over the next week. Normally, one could look down and see so much more of the facility."

I look down. Then I look back up, quickly. "All that white mist is... snow?"

"Not exactly. Nucleogenic particles, to seed the upper atmosphere and create snow clouds." Ch'Tholas sounds smug. "Synthesized inside the facility by our own replicators, and now feeding down the convection vortices, until they reach the outlet vents and are blasted into the jet streams."

Something rings a vague bell in the back of my mind. Snow... or something that looks like snow. My eyes widen, suddenly. T'Laihhae said something about stuff that wasn't snow....

"Can you check that?" I ask.

"Check what?" asks ch'Tholas with a slightly indulgent smile.

"I'm not sure. Scheduling? Work orders, whatever paperwork you have up here? Who ordered that much snow?"

"The ministries of ecology and meteorology jointly decide the weather schedules. Everything is going strictly according to procedure, I do assure you."

I look down again. "What about - I don't know - the chemical composition? Is there any way it could be tampered with?"

Ch'Tholas's smile is openly humouring me, now. "The load was synthesized according to our standard replicator patterns," he says in soothing tones. "If we need to check - well." He rises, goes to another console, sits down. "Here we are. Monitoring is automatic, of course, checking that the chemical mix does not depart from the programmed instructions... and an operator can scan the mixture, so -" his fingers dance on the control panel "- and view the results in real time, here -"

He stops. An image has formed on the panel's monitor screen - a complex shape of rods and spheres; I recognize it as an image of a molecule, but I can't identify the compound. But, whatever it is, it seems to be new to ch'Tholas too. "That's odd," he says. "I must have seen the nucleogenic compound a hundred times.... Oh, well. Probably just an updated formulation."

My skin crawls. "Perhaps," I say, "we should check that."

"I will verify through our library of standard compounds," says ch'Tholas, and presses a few buttons. It takes only a moment for the message to flash back on the screen: NOT FOUND.

I hit my wrist communicator. "Shohl to Grau, come in."

Ronnie's voice replies as I pull out my tricorder. "Grau here. What's up, kiddo?"

"The Falcon's got standard Starfleet data libraries, hasn't it? Including a full chemical database?" Spirits of Earth doesn't have the full computer archives a standard Starfleet vessel would have. An omission, one I should rectify. "I'm uploading a molecular structure scan to you now, I want you to identify it."

"On it." An agonizing pause, while my tricorder whines, reading the data from ch'Tholas's console and transmitting it to the Falcon's computers. There is no other sound, until Ronnie comes back with a single obscene word.

"Sorry," she adds. "Banned chemical warfare compound. Terran in origin, dates from, umm, less settled times. Pasicide-7. The word is half Latin and half Greek, no good will come of it. Brewed up by anti-Federation, anti-alien fanatics -"

The etymological references to the Earth root languages click inside my head. "Some kind of broad-spectrum toxin?"

"Kills anything, yeah. Anything with iron, copper, cobalt or nickel-based blood. Hell, it's even got a silicotropic radical, so it'll hit silicon-based lifeforms too. Stuff oughtta slaughter a Horta or a Vorta. Sorry. Something hit my inappropriate humour switch. Um. How much of this stuff are we talking about?"

"I don't understand." Ch'Tholas's voice is shaking.

I look down at the mists below. "About a planetary atmosphere's worth. Ronnie, what are we going to do?"

"Um. Well. One good thing about this muck, that molecule is fairly fragile. Chemical bonds will break on exposure to any sort of high-energy discharge. You might make a dent in it with your hand phaser, even."

Mentally, I compare the cubic kilometres of space beneath me to the charge in my hand weapon. "Not enough of one." I turn to ch'Tholas. "We're going to have to shut Storm Command down."

"We can't," he moans.

"We have to. You said it yourself. This stuff is going to blanket the whole of the planet."

"No, you don't understand." Ch'Tholas's voice is raw. "The vortices are self-sustaining. Even if I put all the generators into full reverse, right now, it would take at least eight hours to bring the cycles to a stop. We don't have anything like that time before the contaminated air reaches the outlet vents."

"Damnation. What are the alternatives? Think!" I'm saying it to myself, as much as to him. Release a neutralizing agent? We'd have to find it, synthesize it in bulk, release it into the dome - Not nearly enough time. Evacuate the dome? Use the cargo transporters to beam the poison into space? Once again, not enough time, not even with our ships' transporters at full capacity. But transporters work two ways -

"Ronnie. We're going to have to beam some sort of explosive into the dome, break up that poison before it reaches the outside air." I'm thinking fast, adrenaline blocking out the vast fear I feel, for my planet, my people, myself. "A massive UV flash charge would be best, but standard antimatter demolitions charges will do the job. Set up the Falcon's cargo transporters."

"On it," says Ronnie.

I turn back to ch'Tholas. "You'll have to take Storm Command's defences offline so we can do that. Can you manage that?"

"Yes. Yes. I think so." Ch'Tholas rises, crosses to another console. "How did this happen?"

"My guess, data subversion. Cyber-warfare. The Hegemony must have access to plenty of Vulcan techs and scientists who've worked on Andoria. They gimmicked your systems to replicate this, instead of the standard nucleogenic chemicals you expected." My mouth is dry. "If we hadn't caught it -"

"Tylha." Ronnie's voice on the comms. "Antimatter charges are getting ready now, but I'm still reading damn near total transporter inhibition over Storm Command."

"Turn that off," I order ch'Tholas.

He looks at me blankly. "I have."

I check with my tricorder. "Jamming waves right across all transporter frequencies. Still. Must be more data gimmickry. Can we get directly to the inhibitors and turn them off manually?"

"They're spaced out along the rim of the dome," ch'Tholas says. "The pneumo-cars... should be fast enough."

I gesture to the two technicians. I hope I don't look as scared as they do. "You two, with me. Let's find these things and get them shut off." I head for the pneumo-car door. "Ch'Tholas," I call back over my shoulder, "stay here, make sure all the other defence systems are down - and if you can think of anything else, anything, that will help - do it!"

"Yes," says ch'Tholas, in a small, broken voice.

The door hisses open and I bundle myself and the two techs into the car. "You two know what we're looking for?" I ask.

"Yes," says one of them. The other nods grimly.

"Good. If we can't... fix this... what other delivery systems do we have? Could we get a shuttlecraft inside the dome? Load it with charges, or just blow its engines -"

The pneumo-car jolts into motion. The vehicles are powered by air pressure, of which there is no shortage in Storm Command. I try not to think about what's in the air outside. The working areas of Storm Command are shielded, of course; the air currents would kill the people inside, otherwise - the sheer noise from those captive storms would be enough to kill. I hope the shields are good enough to keep out the poison....

"The inlet vents are shielded," says one of the techs. "We could turn the force fields off, but they're also blocked with duranium grilles and reinforced graphene filter meshes. And some of the grilles are part of the load-bearing structure, so if you tried to cut through them, the inlet tunnel would collapse." Sound defensive thinking. Now, it works against us. "The outlet vents can't be blocked, of course... but can even a Starfleet shuttle get through them, in the face of a six hundred kilometer an hour headwind?"

"So our best chance is the transporter," I say, "unless ch'Tholas can come up with something.... Beam down charges outside the jammed area and carry them inside?"

"Sure," says the talkative tech. "With all the security checkpoints opened up, it shouldn't take more than an hour... those inhibitors cover a lot of area." It took me long enough to get from the landing point to Central Overwatch, I remember.

The pneumo-car groans and rumbles to a halt, and we climb out into a huge empty space. The lip of the crater has been tunnelled out in places, built up in others, a whole ring of work spaces and passageways surrounding the dome. "This way," says the talkative tech, and we rattle down a metal stairway and out into a corridor. Lighting systems switch on, responding to our presence, throwing a thin harsh light over machines and structural girders and endless empty corridors. Our urgent footsteps echo from the concrete walls -

Something moves, up ahead of us. "What the -?" says the talkative tech. Beside an open doorway, floating about a metre and a half off the ground, is the stubby shape of a maintenance drone, its pointed nose sweeping across the air as it turns mechanically to and fro. "They're not supposed to -" the tech begins.

The drone turns towards his voice, and a needle of orange phaser light spits from its nose, spearing through the tech's body before he can finish his sentence. He drops inertly to the floor. I drop, too, and roll, my own phaser out, the beam searing out at the drone. Its shields sparkle and flare -

Then the drone itself sparkles, and suddenly there are two drones, and both are fleeing at divergent angles, hurtling down the corridors at maximum speed. One of them passes me, so close that I feel the breeze as it whooshes by. I turn and fire wildly after it, but miss.

The silent tech is kneeling over his companion's body. My wrist comm chirps at me. "Tylha," says Ronnie's voice, "I don't know what you're doing, but the transporter inhibitors just went up a notch or two -"

I curse, loudly. "It's not Storm Command's inhibitors. Somebody's planted drones here, and they're carrying inhibitor fields themselves. And they've got that damn self-replicator trick we used on the minefields in the Dominion War." Faced with a threat, the drone replicated itself and fled. It's not a trick they can pull off repeatedly - there's only so much material each drone can store in its transporter buffer - but it's enough to give us a royal headache. "We'll have to get all the security troops up here to hunt the damn things down."

I'm sure I see movement, somewhere at the edge of sight down the long curving corridor. I raise my phaser. No matter how quick these things breed, I will hunt them and kill them. All of them.

Then another voice speaks, echoing out of Storm Command's public address system. "Vice Admiral Shohl," ch'Tholas says. "I very much regret... there is no more time."