Star Trek: The Next Generation: Genesis Force by John Vornholt

Author:John Vornholt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2003-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

Her jaw clenched in rage, Marla Karuw leaned over the shoulder of her assistant, Komplum, who was manning the science station on the bridge of the Darzor. Both of them watched the curious sensor readings from Aluwna scroll across the screen.

“What in the Divine are those crazy Klingons doing down there?” she asked with a scowl.

“It appears to be a battle,” answered Komplum. “In the large area they bombarded yesterday.”

Captin Uzel stepped to her side and added, “They must be fighting something on the planet . . . perhaps the creatures they’ve been telling us about.”

“Creatures?” asked Marla in confusion. “The only ones down there are—” She stopped, because she was about to say that Curate Molafzon and his followers were already living on Aluwna, but that was a secret she had vowed to keep.

“Haven’t you been reading the dispatches from Starfleet?” asked Captain Uzel.

“No,” the regent answered brusquely. “Who has time to read all that drivel?”

“It isn’t drivel,” answered the captain, eyeing his leader with mild disapproval. “These Genesis planets are dangerous places, according to Starfleet.”

“That’s our home you’re talking about,” said Marla Karuw. “Whatever is down there, we can learn to live with it . . . or change it. Komplum, bring up the latest status of the satellites. Are they all in place yet?”

“No,” answered the young scientist worriedly. “We’ve had outright failure in a handful of satellites when they went off solar power during the night.”

“What!” she shouted. “And you didn’t tell me?”

Her assistant cringed. “You were so busy in the laboratory with Professor Garlet, and we thought we had it isolated to a few bad plasma cells. I still don’t think it’s a systemwide failure, but we’ve slowed down putting them back into orbit until we could run diagnostics on all of them.”

Captain Uzel cleared his throat and said, “The delay was partly my doing, Regent. We’ve had shuttlecraft pilots and technical teams working around the clock since we returned, and I approved a few hours of rest for them.”

“There’s no time for rest!” snapped Karuw. Hearing her own shrill voice, she stopped to massage her aching head. “I’m sorry, but we’ve got so much left to do. Not only do we have to stabilize those satellites and get them back into orbit, but we’ve got to get the replicators on every ship making parts for the transporter booths. Then everyone will work to assemble them. We’ve got a new compact design—have you seen the prototype?”

Uzel shook his head. “That’s one thing I haven’t had time for. But it seems to me that before we can put up hundreds of transporter booths, we need the Klingons to make Aluwna safe. Regent, I urge you to read the dispatches from Starfleet. For one thing, they’re sending us an expert on Genesis planets.”

Marla Karuw furrowed all six of her eyebrows at him. “Oh, now they send us experts. First the wave, and then someone to explain it? After our eight million survivors are safe, I’ll listen to their experts and their excuses.

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