That was when the lights when out and the sphere was rocked by a massive explosion.
In other sections of the Dyson Sphere (or the Thul Sphere, as it were) the gravity was zero, as Picard had learned. But in the center the gravity was near normal. Calhoun tumbled, end over end, trying to find something that he could grab onto, but there was nothing. Far, terribly far away to his left, was the docking port where his ship was comfortably anchored. It operated on voice recognition, but it had to hear him to respond, and he was simply too far away.
Then Calhoun slammed into something. He landed badly, wrenching his shoulder, and he lay there a moment, stunned. He realized that he had struck the outer edge of the cloaking device. He could feel the power of the mighty machine humming beneath him.
He slid a few feet but then managed to halt his skid. Slowly he tried to push his way back up toward the center of the cloaking device, in the meantime looking around and trying to catch a glimpse of where Darg had gone to. His main hope was that Darg had not landed quite as fortunately as he had. That he had instead clipped an edge and bounced off, or perhaps missed it entirely, and was sent tumbling the rest of the way to the bottom of the sphere.
Suddenly he felt the surface of the cloaking device tremble beneath him in a manner that was in excess of the power rumbling beneath it. He craned his neck around and saw Darg charging him.
The top of the cloaking device was slightly angled downward, and Calhoun did the only thing he could: He stopped fighting the pull of gravity and allowed himself to skid toward the edge. Darg was right after him. Calhoun got to the edge of the device and saw a yawning drop beneath him. He also saw that the side of the device was not smooth: There were handholds, or at least protruding surfaces that could be utilized as hand-holds. The only hope he had was that Darg’s metal fingers were so thick that he wouldn’t be able to utilize them.
Calhoun swung his body over the edge. His toes sought and found something to break his fall. He started clambering down the side like a monkey scaling a mountain. He just couldn’t help but wish that he had some clear idea as to just where the hell he thought he was going.
And in the meantime, his mission was still unfulfilled. He knew that he had almost no time before the Double Helix was unleashed. He had to stop it, somehow.
There was absolutely no choice.
He reached up to his face, grabbed the fake scar that was adhering to his own, and pulled. It came loose with a soft tearing sound, and he slapped the adhesive against the side of the cloaking device. He twisted the edges around each other, and he realized that he had no idea as to whether it was actually activated or not. Well, within fifteen minutes, he’d know for sure…and if the thing really were as powerful as claimed, it would wind up being the last thing he knew.
He then continued his descent, and he’d made it fifteen feet, moving quickly in the slightly lighter-than-normal gravity when he saw Darg reach the edge and look down at him with cold, implacable fury. But it would still take Darg time to find a way to come down after him.
Darg jumped.
Son of a bitch, thought Calhoun.
Darg’s hand lashed out and he snagged a crossbar, halting his fall. The bar held. Damned sturdy devices these Romulans designed. He was clinging, bat-like to the surface of the cloaking device, only a few feet to Calhoun’s right. He advanced on Calhoun, and Calhoun looked around frantically, up and down, trying to determine if there was a direction he could go fast enough that would carry him out of Darg’s reach. Nothing presented itself.
Darg was closer, closer, and the blades were fully extended on his hand. Within less than a second, he would be close enough to slash out at Calhoun and cut him to ribbons. Beneath Calhoun’s fingers, he could feel the power of the cloaking device surging beneath him. If there were some way to disrupt it, maybe…
Too late. Darg’s fingers lashed out, trying to slice through Calhoun’s grip. Calhoun desperately shifted handholds, swinging his body out of the way, buying himself perhaps another second or two. But Darg had him cold, they both knew it.
And then Darg spotted the explosive that Calhoun had affixed to the surface of the cloaking device. He didn’t recognize it for what it was, clearly, but he didn’t like what he saw. With one glance at Calhoun’s expression, he could tell that Calhoun wasn’t happy about his noticing it either. That was more than enough reason for him to reach for it and start to peel it off. As he did so, he said almost conversationally, “Any last words?”
“Actually…yes. Three, to be exact,” said Calhoun. He yanked the pip off his shirt where he had secreted it and slapped it on Darg’s arm. “Activate, transporter right.”
Darg looked at him in confusion, and suddenly he dematerialized. He let out a roar and lunged at Calhoun, but his now-phantom hands went right through him, and then Darg vanished. Seconds later, he materialized in the heart of the cloaking device.
Calhoun had no real idea what would happen when that occurred. The energies required to power a cloaking device that big were like nothing that Calhoun had ever encountered before. He didn’t know what powered it, nor did he know what powered Darg’s robotic body. All he knew was that he was combining two elements, and hoping for the best.
What he got was far more than he had bargained for. For he felt a violent rumbling beneath him, and he heard, or thought he heard, a truncated scream from Darg before the energies within the cloaking device ripped him apart, even his powerful mechanical body not impervious to the power and energy that was buffeting him.
And then Calhoun heard an explosion, muffled but huge, and he suddenly realized that the explosive adhesive had been stuck to Darg when he rematerialized, and he had the further flash of understanding that the explosive had been detonated prematurely thanks to the forces roiling within the cloaking device.
He did the only thing he could. He hurled himself off the cloaking device into mid-air, hurtling down and away from the immediate blast area.
A split second later, the cloaking device erupted.
XXIII.
THERE WAS ALARM throughout the sphere as the cloaking device erupted in flame. The entire manufactured world trembled from the detonation.
Thul saw it from a distance and couldn’t believe it. From his vantage point he could see the crowd that had been milling about in the great square, waiting to witness the signing of the document that would be the cue for the annihilation of the Federation. Except the picture on the huge screen had disappeared as systems shorted out and went down all over the sphere. Not only that, but they could see and hear, as he just had, the terrible explosion that had originated at the very core of the sphere.
Silver stood up, gingerly pulling his hand from the surface of the computer.
“What are you doing!” said an alarmed Thul in the now-darkened room. “I need you to interface with the Omega 9! The job’s too big for a normal human mind! You have to—”
“I have to do nothing,” Silver said calmly. “I have analyzed the present situation, including the obvious sabotage to this sphere. It is my belief that, within three minutes, at the present rate of destruction, this sphere will be destroyed. I have no desire to accompany it. So…I am leaving.”
And suddenly there was a fearful looking weapon in Thul’s hand, pulled from the folds of his cloak. “Get back there, Silver!” he snarled.
“I am leaving,” said Silver.
Thul fired.
• • •
Picard watched the entire scene unfold with a sort of distant disbelief.
Thul fired upon the being whom he called Silver. But the blast from Thul’s own weapon was no more effective upon Silver than anything that Picard might have wielded. The blast ricocheted harmlessly off Silver…
…and struck Kendrow.
With a howl of agony, clutching at his blackened chest, Kendrow went down. He flopped about on the floor like a just-landed marlin, making incoherent babbling noises.
Thul paid him no mind. Instead he fired once more at Si
lver, and had no more luck than he’d had the previous time. Silver walked past him, completely ignoring him.
Everything forgotten except his boiling rage and desperation to carry out the final demise of the Federation, Thul charged at Silver. All pretensions of dignity, all of his superiority, were gone, vanished, boiled away by pure fury. It made him a very easy target. Picard reversed his gun, bringing the butt-end around, and as Thul passed him, Picard slammed him across the side of the head. Thul collapsed at his feet.
Silver paused a moment to cast a glance at Picard. “I would leave here if I were you,” he said simply, and then the silver-metal being turned and walked away.
Picard turned quickly and headed over to Kendrow. He knelt down next to him, saw the severity of the wound, saw the despair in the man’s eyes. Kendrow clearly knew he was dying…and yet he was looking up at Picard with heartbreaking despair, silently pleading for him to help hm. Picard hesitated, unsure of what he could possibly do…
And that was when Gerrid Thul leaped upon his back.
A huge piece of metal, buffeted by the shock wave, slammed into Calhoun as he hurtled through mid-air. His head rang from the impact, but then he quickly realized that it was the single luckiest thing that could have happened to him.
The shock wave from the explosion hit, radiating outward, propelling Calhoun toward the far edges of the sphere. He tumbled end over end, but because he was clutching with all his strength at the large shard of metal, his body pressed flat against it, he managed to avoid losing consciousness altogether. He was like a crazed surfer riding out a massive wave.
Before he knew it, he slammed into the interior surface of the sphere. He lost his grip on the metal shard and it spiralled away from him. Once again in a zero-G area, Calhoun hung there for a moment, dazed, banged up, barely able to string a coherent thought together.
Then he started to float back toward the center, toward the massive conflagration which was building upon itself exponentially.
It was at that moment that he saw his freighter, docked and waiting. It was some distance away and he prayed his voice would carry as he shouted at the top of his lungs, “Freighter! Voice response activate! Pick up!”
For a moment he was certain that it hadn’t heard him, and then the running lights suddenly flared to life. Wasting no time, the freighter pulled away from its moorings and angled obediently down toward its pilot.
Another explosion roared from within the heart of the sphere as the lower half of the cloaking device went up in flames.
Calhoun was now plummeting toward it, and then the freighter was there, main door open. Calhoun tumbled into the cabin, kept rolling and slammed into the far wall. He lay there for a moment, stunned, muttering, “I’m not getting paid enough.”
Then he stumbled to his feet and seized the controls of the freighter…
…and was abruptly faced with a very difficult choice.
Picard tried to stagger to his feet and barely managed to do so. Thul was on his back, howling in fury, and Picard barely managed to shove him off. They faced each other, both their weapons fallen. Thul had a look of dementia in his eyes.
“It’s over, Thul. We have to get out of here—!”
“No.” Thul was shaking his head like a man deep in denial. “No…they have to die…you have to die…the Double Helix…”
“I said it’s over! Snap out of it, man! Nothing is going to be accomplished by staying here and being incinerated!”
Thul didn’t listen. He was beyond listening, beyond caring. Instead he came right at Picard, his attack so sudden that Picard barely had time to defend himself against it.
And Picard abruptly found himself in the hands of one of the most devastating hand-to-hand combatants he had ever encountered.
One wouldn’t have known it to look at Thul. The Thallonian was clearly an older man, older than Picard. He wasn’t all that tall, not especially wide. But in close-quarters combat, he was a terror, an absolute terror. Picard wasn’t exactly helpless in such situations, a fair hand-to-hand combatant himself, with some good moves and a rather nasty right hook, if he said so himself. But he couldn’t even begin to mount a defense against Gerrid Thul.
Thul’s hands were lightning. Picard would try and block a punch, and even before he had time to realize it was a feint, Thul had landed two blows, a third and a fourth. He struck Picard at will, doubling him over, straightening him up with an uppercut. Picard never even laid a hand on him.
Thul picked him up and threw him out into the main corridor, advancing on him mercilessly. All around them, panicked residents of the sphere were running like mad, trying to get to whatever ships were nearest so that they could get the hell out of there. Thul didn’t seem to notice any of them. He was focused, with laser-like efficiency, on Picard.
Picard felt the world swimming around him, tried to get to his feet, and then Thul was there and he kicked Picard in the gut, causing him to curl up like a fetus, and he kicked him over and over, howling, “You, Picard! It’s all your fault! You’re the living symbol of everyone and everything that destroyed my life! But you’re not going to be living much longer!”
David Kendrow’s desperate, questing hand stretched out toward the hand padd for the Omega 9. His body trembled from the exertion, and he was certain that he wasn’t going to make it. But then, at the last moment, like a gift from God, he had a small surge of energy that was small, ever so small, but it was enough. He lunged forward and his hand came into contact with the padd.
He trembled as the nannites, careless of the environment that was crumbling around them, did their job. They joined with him, penetrated his mind, his body, and seconds later his consciousness was pulled from his body and sent hurtling into the depths of the Omega 9.
What he had, at that point, was a plan that could most charitably be called a long-shot. What he was hoping was that his consciousness would survive the passing of his body if it was buried deep within the Omega 9. The problem was that, all too soon, the Omega 9 would be dust, gone with the rest of the sphere.
But the intention had been for the Omega 9 to interface with computers on other worlds. Granted, it had been too massive a job for Kendrow to do himself. Silver was supposed to bridge that gap with his machine mind. But Kendrow was still capable of at least projecting himself to some other computer data base…earth, perhaps, or another world. And perhaps…just perhaps…he could use the replicators wherever he wound up to fashion himself some sort of body. There were other possibilities as well, but before he could explore any of them, he had to survive.
He plunged into the heart of the Omega 9, the glistening circuitry singing gently to him. It was the first time that he himself had done it, and it was glorious, it was like nothing else. He floated there, feeling as if he had somehow managed to return to his mother’s womb. There was peace, there was security, there was…
Darkness. Something was moving in around him, something that seemed alien to the Omega 9. Kendrow’s consciousness looked around, tried to perceive, tried to understand…
And a voice echoed all around him, a voice that said, I’d been trying to get your attention, David. Causing glitches here and there, doing what I could in my own small way…how kind of you to finally brave the interior of the Omega 9…it took you quite some time, didn’t it…but you always were a bit of a coward at heart, you know that, don’t you, David…?
Kendrow looked around frantically. It was everywhere, the dark and cold, and he called out, Who is it? Who’s there?!?
I brushed against the Omega 9, David…with Darg and the others standing there, and you, and all you bright people, and you didn’t spot it. Didn’t spot the final connection. What did you think, Dave…that you were the first person to hit upon the idea of putting his consciousness into the Omega 9? You always were more of a follower than a leader…
And then he understood. Fro…Frobisher…but…but you’re dead…
Yes, Dave. I was dead. But you know, Dave…I’m feeling a
lot better now…
The laughter was everywhere and Kendrow screamed as the darkness enveloped him.
Picard rolled over onto his back and then Gerrid Thul was upon him. He was straddling Picard, his hands at Picard’s throat, and he slammed the captain’s head against the floor. Stars exploded behind Picard’s eyes, and Thul wasn’t letting up, not for a second.
“I made a son…and you destroyed him. I created the perfect virus…and you destroyed my plan to implement it,” and as he spoke the pressure of his hands upon Picard’s throat was steady and unyielding. “You call me the destroyer? It’s you, Picard! You are the bringer of pain! You are the slayer of dreams! You!”
The test tube rolled out from Picard’s pocket.
It made a gentle, tinkling sound as it rolled. Thul cast a confused glance in the direction of the tube…
And the distraction was all Picard needed. He broke Thul’s grip and shoved as hard as he could, sending Thul off-balance as he gasped and drew in air. Thul tumbled to the side, hit the floor hard.
Picard heard something break.
He clambered to his feet and saw Thul, on his back, starting to tremble. Instantly Picard understood. Thul had landed atop the test tube and crushed it…and the Double Helix virus was rampaging through his body. But it was doing so in highly concentrated form.
Gerrid Thul, creator of the Double Helix, writhed in the grasp of his own creation. His back arched, his tongue lolled out, and his eyes went wide with horror as he realized what had happened. For all his speeches about not caring about life, about being dead already, he certainly seemed to have the expression of someone who was suddenly terrified about being hurled into oblivion. Or perhaps it was simply the way that it was occurring.