The Lost Era: Well of Souls: Star Trek (39 page)

Halak sighed. “Locate and secure the portal. Take detailed sensor readings on the construction and operation. Try not to get myself killed. Anything else?”

“No.” Talma’s eyes slid to Vaavek. “You?”

“A moment alone, if you please.”

“Right,” said Halak, backing out of the T’Pol’s bridge toward the gangway. “I’ll just stand over here while you two whisper.”

“No,” said Talma. “Stay right where you are. Anything you have to say,
Sivek,
you can say in front of the commander.”

The Vulcan didn’t look convinced. “Why are
you
remaining aboard? It’s a Vulcan ship.
You
are Starfleet Intelligence. This is not the V’Shar’s mission.”

“But you’re a Vulcan,” said Talma easily. “And a Vulcan male at that. Far better equipped to deal with Commander Halak than I am.” She looked over at Halak. “Isn’t that right?”

Halak put his hands on his hips. “Maybe. We could certainly go one-on-one right now, see what happens.”

“You would not enjoy it, Commander,” said Vaavek. “If, however, you are someone who thrives on experiential learning, I am willing to accommodate you.”

“Down, boys.” She returned her gaze to Vaavek. “That’s the plan. Okay?”

“Not entirely,” said Vaavek.

“Good, I’m glad that’s settled. Now, we’re wasting time. You and Halak get down there. And Sivek, don’t forget a phaser.”

“Wait a minute,” Halak protested. “If he gets one, I want one.”

Talma slid into the pilot’s chair and swiveled around until her back was to the commander. “No.”

“I get it. I get to take care of whomever’s down there, but then Sivek gets to take care of me.”

Talma plotted her course for the planet’s moon. “Only if you misbehave, Commander.”

“You know that won’t happen.”

“Well,” now Talma pulled her head around and gave Halak a sweet smile, “let’s hope not, for your sake—and for Arava’s.”

“
My
sake?” Halak’s face darkened with an angry rush of blood. “The only reason I’m doing this is for Arava. I don’t have anything left to lose except her.”

“Then I’m quite fortunate,” said Talma, turning aside once more. “Because they say that the most dangerous man is the one who’s got nothing left to lose. Good luck, Commander.”

“I believe in making my own luck, thanks.”

“Then I suggest you make a lot of it, Commander.”
Because you can bet—
Talma listened to Halak’s angry footsteps fade away as he clambered down to the waiting pod—
that if you and Vaavek fail, I’ll be making mine.

“Twice?”
Garrett leaned over Bulast’s shoulder and stared at his communications display. “Are you sure?”

“There’s no mistake, Captain,” said Bulast. “See, these time indices, here and here? Two distinct signals: a blip on and then off, and now one that’s continuous.”

“Oh, good,” said Stern, who’d been hovering around Garrett’s command chair for the last hour. “Now we’ve got alarms. We lose Halak’s transponder signal in all that radioactive slush out there, but we get alarms.”

Garrett ignored her. “So you’re saying it’s like a door.”

Bulast nodded. “Like a door that opened and closed. Twice. Only the second time, someone left it open.”

“Careless,” said Stern.

“Or maybe,” said Bat-Levi, who’d been studying the same signal at her station, “maybe it’s not that the door’s been left
open,
but that the alarm hasn’t properly been turned on, or off, to begin with. Captain, I remember my parents had an alarm for their house. Even if your retinal scan matched, the thing let off a little bleep. It was a redundant system. Retinal scan outside, voice print inside. But here was the real catch. If someone, an intruder, were to somehow fake the retinal scan but made a mistake along the way—bungled the match before getting it right, let’s say—the system let him in. But then it sent out a silent alarm, and the alarm stayed on.”

“So as not to alert the intruder.” Garrett looked over at Bulast. “Could that be it? Is it a distress call?”

“Captain, there’s no way of knowing. The first signal reads just like the commander said, as if someone opened the door, maybe tripped an alarm doing it but then
disarmed
it. Closed the door correctly, maybe, I don’t know. The second reads as if they didn’t bother closing it, or maybe didn’t know they had to. But here’s the other thing that’s peculiar. That signal reads like a general distress only the band is narrow, closer to infrared. So the technology is ancient. Mid-twenty-first century stuff.”

“Damn.” Sighing, Garrett resumed her pacing. She’d been pacing for two hours, too keyed up to sit in her command chair.
Probably wearing a groove in the deck.
“Damn, why did this have to happen now?”

“Captain,” said Glemoor, “in terms of probabilistic ...”

“I think that was an expression, Glemoor,” said Stern. To Garrett: “What do you want to do?”

“What I
want
and what I
have
to do might be mutually exclusive. What about Halak? Any luck getting his signal back?”

“No,” said Bulast. “We lost him as soon as the
T’Pol
dropped out of warp.”

“But we’ve still got the
T’Pol
.”

“Not really,” said Glemoor. “We’ve picked up remnants of a warp signature consistent with a Vulcan warpshuttle in this sector. But those remnants are decaying fast in the strong magnetic field of that binary star system out there. Old or new, I have no way of knowing. They could have left this sector and we wouldn’t be able to tell.”

“But they were heading in this general direction,” Stern pointed out “And there’s nothing leading
away
from here. So they’re still around.”

“Unless the ship backtracked and exited the system at a point too distant for us to see, perhaps subtending its signal behind the neutron star. If the
T’Pol
elected to swing close to the neutron star, any warp signature would have been distorted, almost like a cloaking device.”

“
Could
the alarm be coming from Halak?” asked Stern.

Bulast spoke up. “Negative on that, not unless he’s jury-rigged something. If he has, you’d assume he’d try to target us, not just blare a general distress.”

“Maybe he didn’t have a choice,” said Stern.

“And risk alerting the Cardassians?” said Garrett. She ran a hand over her forehead. “I don’t think so. And speaking of Cardassians, any sign of them?”

“Not yet,” said Bat-Levi. She didn’t say that might change in the very near future. She didn’t have to.

“What about origination point?” Garrett looked over at Glemoor who was seated at his console to Castillo’s left. “Where’s that alarm coming from?”

“Origination point of the propagation wave appears to be the fourth planet, Captain. I read power emanations and a periodicity that’s different from the general background wash of gamma rays from that neutron star.”

“What type of power is it?”

“That is what is so unusual, Captain. I wasn’t certain of my findings initially, but Commander Bat-Levi has verified. There are actually two signatures: one is something very close to fusion power. But the other is neither nuclear nor thermal. It is not electromagnetic, but it appears to be a highly charged
neuro
magnetic plasma interface.”

“Neuromagnetic?” Garrett glanced over at Stern, who only shook her head. “You’re saying brain waves?”

“In a manner of speaking. It’s more like a plasma cloud of ionized particles, only in this instance the driving force is neuromagnetic, and not radioactive. Both emanate from deep beneath the planet’s surface. And there’s something else.”

“What? Another power source?”

“Not exactly.” The Naxeran screwed up his face in a way that reminded Garrett of an inquisitive cat. “There’s a biosphere, Captain. That is, I believe there is. We’re still at the extreme limits of sensors.”

“A biosphere?” Garrett was at Glemoor’s station in two strides. “Are there life signs? Did
they
send the signal?”

“Negative. The alarm appears to have originated underground.”

“Near that neuromagnetic power source?” And when Glemoor nodded, Garrett continued, “What about ships?”

“At this distance, I can not say for certain if there are ships. Certainly, there are none orbiting the planet. The planet does possess two moons, however.”

“So a ship could hiding behind one.”

“That is a possibility. With all the radiation in the area, it is also just as possible that there is a ship we cannot see.”

Bat-Levi said, “Captain, we have to assume that the alarm’s genuine until we know otherwise. The
T’Pol
could be anywhere, and we have no way of knowing exactly where, or whether she’s moved off. But distress calls take precedence.”

“Rachel,” said Stern, “you
can’t
...”

“Doctor,” said Garrett, in a peremptory tone that brooked no debate. “Much as I might like it to be otherwise, Bat-Levi’s right. If that’s a distress call, we have to answer.”

Stern was undeterred. “And if it isn’t? What if it’s some old hunk of junk that’s malfunctioned, or something? You going to gamble Halak’s life on a lousy
machine?”

“We don’t know that it
is
junk, and we don’t have the luxury of assuming anything.” Garrett blew out a long sigh. “All right, everyone, listen up. This is what we’re going to do.”

Air.
Kaldarren jogged down the tunnel, his helmet banging his right thigh. The air was warm but smelled old and was thick with decay. Kaldarren saw light just ahead. He squinted at his tricorder.
Reading an entryway, and this tunnel’s been carved, it’s artificial, there’s plaster on the stone, and that long tunnel to the west, those branch points, this has to be a
tomb ...

For an instant—when he turned into the main burial chamber, with its vaulted ceiling, and saw the dead king and all that wealth spilling over the stone floor and the fabulous mural—Kaldarren forgot everything: Chen-Mai, the portal. Even Jase. Kaldarren let out his breath in a sigh of wonder. It was all here. He’d been right. A xenoarchaeologist’s dream, the find of a lifetime. And the writing on the walls: Hebitian, but with archaic variations different from the script he’d seen, the one officially touted by the Cardassians as proof positive of their descent from the ancient race. But the Hebitians had
been
here, Kaldarren knew now. The Hebitians had been on
this
planet, thousands of years ago.

Then Kaldarren remembered the mind-scream. They were
still
here.

Jase.
Kaldarren’s eyes jerked to an opening diagonally across the main burial chamber.
In there.

He felt them before he saw them or knew what they were: a strange, insistent tugging at the back of his mind, like fingers scrambling around the seam of a door, searching for a way to pry into his mind. Their touch was cold, malevolent. Kaldarren shivered. Evil.

And for a split second, Kaldarren felt fear. But he had to stay calm. More than that: He knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that if he was going to get Jase out, he’d have to open his mind and let these things inside, so he understood what he was dealing with and how to fight them—but not just yet.

Oh, Rachel.
Kaldarren thought her name as if it was a type of prayer. He wasn’t sure why he thought of Garrett just then, but perhaps it was because of the darkness of the things skittering around the edges of his mind. Their evil filled him with fear and such foreboding ... Kaldarren closed his eyes, as if doing so would block out his fear. Oh, there were so many things he’d never told her, and other things he wished he’d left unsaid. How they’d hurt one another, and now it was too late to tell her how sorry he was.
Good-bye, Rachel.

And then, before he could change his mind, Kaldarren hurried into the next room.

The room was small and close, suffused with a silver glow that reminded Kaldarren of light globes, though none were visible. He saw Pahl, standing beside a pile of dark rubble. The boy’s back was to him, and as Kaldarren stepped forward, the boy pivoted on his heel until Kaldarren saw the ice-blue eyes, the silver mask.

“Pahl,” Kaldarren said, his heart sinking. “Pahl, where ... ?”

“Dad!” Jase’s voice, on the edge of hysteria, and then in the next instant, Jase had darted from a far corner and launched himself into Kaldarren’s arms. “Dad, Dad!”

“Jase.” Kaldarren’s throat constricted with emotion as he hugged his son tight against his chest. Then he gripped his son by his shoulders. “Jase, what’s wrong with Pahl?”

“They’re here,” whispered Jase. His lips trembled, and Kaldarren saw that the boy’s skin was so pale it was almost translucent. “They’re here, Dad, they’re here, don’t you see them? They’re all around, and now they’ve got Pahl. Only It’s not Pahl, It only looks like Pahl, but It’s not Pahl.”

“How?”

“He ... Pahl picked up this mask. He picked it up and he put it on. I couldn’t stop him! And then they were everywhere, coming out the walls, can’t you see them, can’t you ...”

“Jase.”
Kaldarren’s fingers dug into Jase’s shoulders, and he held his son at arm’s length. He would’ve touched the boy’s mind, but he was still wary of dropping his guard.
Can’t let them in all at once, or I’m lost. I need to be the one to control the contact, not the other way around.
Instead, Kaldarren searched the boy’s face and saw his terror. “Who are they?”

And then Kaldarren felt a stab of fear. “Did
they
...
?”

“No, they didn’t hurt me. They didn’t get inside. They tried. But I’m not right, I can’t ... I don’t think they can get inside me. I don’t understand it all, only I know they took Pahl and they wanted to take me, but they can’t. But, Dad, they’re
here
,” Jase looked behind Kaldarren, eyes darting from side to side, “they’re all around. Can’t you see them? Can’t you
see?”

No, he couldn’t see. Kaldarren kept his mind closed. He wouldn’t let them in, not yet. But the air was thick and he
felt
those icy fingers again, tapping at the opaqueness of his mind, like leafless branches tapping at windowpanes on a winter’s day.

But his tricorder saw them. Kaldarren scanned the data. Highly cohesive fields of psionic energy held together the way that high-energy particles were contained in a magnetic field. Energy that had form but was not matter: there, and not there, as if they—whoever they were—trembled on the threshold between dimensions. Had they been there all along? If so, why hadn’t he sensed them? They flitted about the periphery of his mind
now.
Why not earlier? All the hours he’d spent searching in vain for beings that now his tricorder registered as a matter of routine.

Or maybe it was something the boys had done. That mask, for instance. Kaldarren studied Pahl’s face, the mask. An image flashed in his brain: that small, chipped stone figure he’d found a few days ago. It had a mask. Come to think of it, the mask Pahl wore was very similar to ones he’d heard about but never seen. An obscure Cardassian religion, one that the government didn’t endorse but which survived in small pockets here and there. What was it? Kaldarren searched his memory. Yes, the Oralian Way, that was it. If he remembered rightly, certain Oralians used what they called a recitation mask as part of their religious ritual. They claimed that the mask was a conduit, connecting them to a higher spiritual power. The Oralians who wore the mask did not claim that they spoke the words of a god. Rather, the mask served to augment powers they already had.

And now Pahl wore a mask, and Kaldarren knew, unequivocally, that the boy had somehow opened the door through which a being that was pure thought had managed to slip, invading the boy’s mind. What if this was the original mask upon which the Oralian recitation mask was based? The mask could be a device attuned to the psionic signature of a certain select few.

Kaldarren looked down at his son. “I can’t see them, Jase. I can’t ... let myself just yet. No time to explain, Jase. But tell me: What do they look like?”

“Animals.” Jase licked his lips. “Like from those old stories you showed me. Egypt, Greece, early Betazoid mythology.”

“Like the statues in the other room?” said Kaldarren. “The murals?”

“Yes, but there are also people, and they look like ...” Jase’s eyes slid to a spot behind Kaldarren.

Turning, Kaldarren spied the corpse of the boy. He studied the dead boy’s facial features. Even with decay and mummification, Kaldarren could see that the boy had raised periorbital ridges. Pre-Cardassian?

“Dad,” said Jase, “you have to help Pahl.”

“I don’t think I can, son.”

“But we can’t leave him here. How do you know? You haven’t even tried!”

Kaldarren licked his lips. “Jase, I’m a telepath, but there are limits. I couldn’t find this place, remember? You and Pahl did. Whoever’s there, in Pahl, allowed the two of you in, not me.”

“But you’re here now.
They’re
here. They let you come, and you found me because I knew you would, because I need you. Dad, you have to try!”

“Son, there’s nothing ...” He stopped when he saw Jase’s face change. “Son ...”

“You’re afraid,” said Jase. His voice was hard-edged, bitter. “That’s what it is. You’re afraid to try. Mom would be afraid, but
she’d
try.”

Kaldarren felt a lump swell and lodge in his throat. He
was
afraid. Maybe that’s why he’d not been able to find the portal
(is this a portal?)
and why he couldn’t see what his son said was there. He was afraid, as he’d always been afraid. Rachel had been the stronger one. That’s why he’d been attracted to her. The only risk Kaldarren had ever taken in his entire life was to marry Rachel Garrett. In the end, he’d let her walk out of his life; he’d lost her without a fight.

And he didn’t have to fight now. He could walk away, with Jase, and he didn’t think these beings would stop him. They had Pahl, and perhaps that was enough. Besides, Pahl wasn’t his responsibility.

But Kaldarren also knew that if he did that, if he succumbed to fear, he’d lose Jase the way he’d lost Rachel. Oh, Jase would still be alive, but his soul would be closed off to Kaldarren forever and Kaldarren would lose his son just as surely as if Jase’s mind had been taken over by one of these beings.

“All right,” said Kaldarren, even as his instinct for self-preservation screamed that this was anything
but
all right. “I’ll try.”

Jase’s face was pinched with apprehension. His eyes were wide, dark. He gave his father a slight nod. Took a tiny step back.

Kaldarren turned to Pahl. The boy hadn’t moved or spoken. With exquisite care, Kaldarren opened his mind, just a bit: like cracking a window to let in a whisper of fresh air. He probed the boy’s mind, first touching the surface the way a blind person traces the contours of a stranger’s face. Instantly, Kaldarren felt the presence of the Other. Formless and cold. Dark, as if it dwelled in the deep caverns of the mind.

Kaldarren flinched away even before he knew he had, and then he was orbiting the periphery of the boy’s mind, his own mind safe and unscathed. In the next instant, hot shame flowed through his veins.
Stop, don’t let fear control you!
He was acutely aware of his son’s intense gaze; of the closeness of the air, thick with these beings; of the stink of his own sweat.

I must.
Kaldarren gathered himself.
I must.
He loosed part of his mental shield, as if shedding a piece of clothing, and then he waded into the black ocean of Pahl’s mind ... and there was the Other, in the shallows—a woman, not a woman, and thoughts that twined and writhed like a serpent’s tail.

Jase caught at his hand. “Dad?” He squeezed Kaldarren’s chill fingers.
“Dad?”

“Quiet, son,” said Kaldarren, his voice strange, halting. “I have to concentrate, I have to ...” He broke off, redirected his focus toward the Other.
Who are you?

Dithparu.
The word floated, tenuous as the silver strand of a spider’s web.
Dithparu.

Night Spirit,
Kaldarren translated. Kaldarren always found it easier to imagine his own thoughts as a voice and he thought his voice now. “Do you have a name?”

“Uramtali”—her thought-voice, like a sigh on the wind—“They called me Uramtali.”

“What do you want, Uramtali? Why do you hold this boy?”

The
dithparu,
like the dry rasp of leaves upon dead branches: “He has a hole in his heart. There is Night in his soul. The other, he is Night but not enough.”

Night.
Kaldarren’s mind held the word, examined it. Uramtali said
Night,
but she—It—meant something different. What?

Uramtali was speaking again. “This one is a boy of Night, like the Night Kings before him. Bred to the purpose.”

Kaldarren didn’t understand. He closed his eyes. He knew vaguely that Jase still held his hand, but Kaldarren’s mind was further from shore now, and he drifted, opening more of the shielded, secret places of his mind.
Think it to me.

Instantly, a blizzard of strange images streamed through his consciousness. There were so many, Kaldarren couldn’t put names to any of them and he merely held his mind open, letting the images impress themselves into his brain like red-hot brands upon exposed flesh. The aroma of incense was full in his nostrils; he heard the voices of a people crying out their grief; he saw a glittering processional of mourners, light globes floating in the air above their heads, as they snaked their way through mountain passes—

Uramtali’s thought-voice in his head:
the light globes floating in the air above their heads, as they snaked their way through mountain passes to this place, these mountains with their strange magnetic fields, trapping us here.

Then he understood. The
dithparus:
fantastically old, the remnants of a powerful civilization predating the Vulcans, the Bajorans, even the Organians and the Metrons, and so ancient that they no longer remembered where they had come from, what their true names were, what their own bodies had once looked like, or that they’d even had bodies. They knew only that they were the
dithparus,
the name given to them by the people on this planet, who worshiped them as gods.

In exile—
Uramtali’s thought-voice, so sad—
in exile.

Exiled to a parallel dimensional plane. Trapped.

Imprisoned. Brothers, they were our brothers, but they said that we were evil, darkness, the night side of their own souls.

The Brothers of Light: beings that thought it crueler to kill the Night Spirits than to place them here, unable to cross over, to make the transition from one phase to another, unless there was a suitable container. A waiting vessel.