Chapter 11: Rigel Ten
"Once we've tied down, we'll be descending into the trade complex. It's got thirty-six levels." Buffy paused and looked at T'Pol, indicating that she should take over.
"Your translators have been programmed for Rigelian. However, you'll encounter numerous other species. Many of them are known to be impatient with newcomers. None of them have seen a human before. You have a tendency to be gregarious. I suggest you restrain that tendency," T'Pol said.
"You forgot to warn us about the drinking water," Tucker complained as he belted his jacket and took one of the communicator/translator devices T'Pol was handing out to the landing party.
T'Pol didn't even get Tucker's comment. She went on to the next thing. "Dr. Phlox isn't concerned with food and water. But he does caution against intimate contact."
"The Vulcans told us Klaang was a courier. If he was here to get something, then whoever gave it to him might know why he was taken. That was only a few days ago," Buffy added optimistically, "and a seven-foot Klingon doesn't go unnoticed. T'Pol's been here before, so we'll follow her lead."
"Where do we rendezvous if we find something?" Dawn asked.
"Back at the shuttlepod. And no one goes anywhere alone. From what I've heard about this place, it's an alien version of an Oriental bazaar. Don't stop to buy trinkets. Ask simple questions, get direct answers. If you don't like what you hear, move on. There are a lot of people down there, or versions of people. Don't get swallowed up. Watch each other. Clear?" Buffy said.
Whether it was or not, they were on their way. The six-seat subwarp shuttlepod was functional, but not really comfortable, and the trip down to the planet seemed longer than it was.
Mayweather brought the pod into the atmosphere and found himself bucking snow-torn slopes and high winds. "Approaching what appears to be a landing deck." He squinted out the windshield. "I see a trail of lights. Runway, possibly."
"I'd say this spaceport accommodates all kinds of craft," Buffy confirmed, just to make them all feel better.
The sight was eerily familiar to anyone who recognized a travel center. There was no fanfare, no ceremony, no warnings or threats as they came down. T'Pol used her knowledge of this place to secure a parking spot where the shuttlepod had a chance of not being plundered, and they immediately disembarked and broke into teams.
Trying to appear casual, Buffy and Dawn went first to the dock-master's control tower. After all, something had to come and go from here with Klaang aboard. He certainly hadn't popped in out of thin air, so there had to be a trail.
They were ushered through a tubular construction with lots of bridges into a central control area with windows on every side, couched by banks of controls and broken every few seconds by the sweep of a beacon from the runways. The dockmaster himself was a huge burly alien preoccupied with traffic.
"Pardon us," Buffy began, hoping the translator didn't get it wrong. "I'm Commander Buffy Summers of the Starfleet vessel Enterprise."
"Who? What planet is that?"
"Starfleet is not a planet," Dawn said. "It's an organization. The planet is Earth."
"Good for you. The visitor's center is on Quintash Plaza."
"Thanks very much," Buffy said. "Before we go, would you answer a few questions for us?"
"There's a manual on the wall in the corridor. Read it," the alien rumbled. "Next time, approach from the mountains. Less crosswind."
"Thank you again ... I'd like to know whether a Klingon vessel of any kind came through here about five or six of your days ago."
"Five or six days? Do you realize how much traffic we process in a single day?"
"You must keep records," Buffy suggested, glancing at Dawn as if asking her sister what she sensed. "This was a one-man Klingon scoutship."
"What species are you?"
"Human," Dawn said. "We're called humans."
As if congratulating her, an alarm went off and lights flashed on the dockmaster's console. The dockmaster hammered on what might have been a keyboard, then checked a monitor.
"Elkan nine, raise your approach vector by point two radiants!"
When the alarm stopped, the dockmaster hammered something new into the keyboard and the monitor changed.
"It was seven days ago. A K'toch-class vessel."
"Does it say who he was here to see?" Buffy wondered.
"What it says is that he arrived at docking port six and was given a level one biohazard clearance."
"You don't seem very interested in what people do here," Buffy said.
"Our visitors value their privacy," the dockmaster said, even though he had just handed over information Klaang probably never wanted known. "It wouldn't be very tusoropko tuproya plo business they're in."
Buffy flinched at the sudden change in sounds and looked at her sister, who busily adjusted the communicator/translator.
"It's all right," she said. "Rigelian uses a pronominal base. The translator's just reprocessing the syntax."
Buffy nodded and then looked back at the dockmaster. "Do you have any records of a Suliban vessel coming in around the same time?"
"Suliban? I don't know that word. Your device must still be malfunctioning."
The dockmaster went back to his work, turning his idea of a shoulder to the newcomers.
Buffy motioned to Dawn, muttered a thank you to the dockmaster and then led the way out into the corridor.
"He's lying," Dawn told Buffy immediately.
"I know," Buffy said. "I didn't need to be an empath to decipher that. Anyways he has no reason to tell us anything. He's probably more scared of whoever wants him to keep silent."
"Why would he be?"
"You remember Worf," Buffy said. "And you yourself saw the Suliban."
"I get what you're saying," Dawn agreed. "One is a warrior race and the other has gone through bioengineering. Who knows besides their chameleon abilities what traits they might have?"
"Now," Buffy said, "if I read the dockmaster correctly, somebody else will know we're here looking for Klaang. Let's go down to the Plaza and appear obvious, shall we?"
Dawn grinned and nodded.
0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0
The main downtown area was an ancient, towering, weatherworn complex that seemed to have been constructed over several decades. Architectural styles ran the gamut here, as did the age of the buildings. In some cases, new structures were built right on top of old ones, without bothering to demolish.
Haze hung in the air, perforated by shafts of artificial light. Myriad species went about their private business, moving in and out of concealed and sometimes locked trading alcoves. Some were in uniform, others in indistinct robes or layered with jewelry. Many carried weapons.
The flavor of the old West was palpable.
"This place reminds me of an old movie," Buffy commented, glancing at a mammoth carpet-haired beast of burden with legs like tree stumps and the smell of a pig farm.
Alien insects came to investigate them—large insects the size of birds on Earth. They hovered, and one perched on Dawn's head for a moment, but became quickly disinterested.
"They don't seem harmful," Buffy said.
Dawn rolled her eyes. "Neither did Spike, but before he was chipped …"
"Right," Buffy said. "Of course being Millennial may make something in us un appetizing to them, too. This must be the Plaza." She led the way to a vast, cavernous thoroughfare of bridgelike walkways that crisscrossed each other well into the sky and for miles in three directions from where they stood.
"T'Pol to First Officer Summers."
Buffy opened up her communicator and responded almost immediately. "Go ahead."
"Central Security claims to have no record of Klaang. But they told me about an enclave on level nineteen where Klingons have been known to go. Something about live food."
"Where on level nineteen?" Buffy asked.
"The easternmost subsection. By the geothermal shafts."
"I'll meet you there as soon as I can. Summers out," Buffy responded as she put away her communicator.
She turned and led Dawn through the trade complex. Deep grinding noises from the power generators far below echoed through damp floors that creaked under their feet.
"Isn't an 'enclave' supposed to have people?" Dawn wondered.
"'Enclave' can mean a lot of things," Buffy said as she kept her eyes peeled and her Slayer senses at full alert. The place looked empty, but that also could mean a lot of things.
"T'Pol said something about 'live' food," Dawn said. "I don't see any restaurants. Of course by what we know of Klingons that is not necessarily a bad thing, since their natural warriors that must mean they love to hunt."
Buffy suddenly drew up short instead as a flicker of movement caught her eye in the industrial distance. Klingons!
"Excuse me!" she shouted. "Hello! Excuse me!"
The Klingons moved away from them.
"Dawn?" Buffy said as she looked at her sister.
Dawn nodded, then shouted, "Ha'quj jeg!"
But there was only silence. The movement stopped. The shadows sagged back to stillness.
"They looked Klingon to me," Dawn said.
Buffy nodded in agreement. "Summers to T'Pol." After a moment, when no answer came, he repeated, "T'Pol, come in." Anxiety rose as no answer came. She looked to Dawn as she drew her plasma pistol. She quietly pointed at Dawn and then herself.
Dawn nodded in understanding. She placed a hand on Buffy's back as she drew power from her sister.
They moved into the deep purpose shadows along the path leading to where the Klingons had disappeared. Above, a spiderweb of age-old metal drums, bridges, archways, and tubes threaded the darkness. Steam billowed from the geothermal ducts, obscuring every step before they took it.
There was someone here.
"I sense there is someone here, watching us," Dawn whispered.
They passed too close to a geothermal duct just as it blew its top. A mushroom of gray-white steam burped from the depths and separated Buffy from Dawn for a critical instant.
Buffy glanced around, but she couldn't find her sister in the steam.
A piece of a shadow burst toward Buffy—Dawn's hand flashed in the cloud and she screamed, only steps from Buffy, but though she reached out, Dawn slipped away.
Buffy whirled full about and took aim. "Dawn, fire, show me where you are."
Just then she was attacked from two sides by a now-familiar dappled team who moved like insects. Suliban! Her pistol flew from her hand at a single blow. She smiled at the Suliban as she lashed out with every ounce of Slayer strength she had and landed a solid strike on a surface that collapsed and seconds turned into punches. One of the attackers fell back.
The other, though, made use of his partner as a distraction. Buffy spun to keep fighting, but her arms were yanked behind her so violently that she gasped with pain and arched her back. In the steam, Dawn cried out again.
While neither of them could die, they could still feel pain, and Buffy was sure that was Dawn was feeling now pain. Maybe even so much pain that it blocked out the weight of the emotions from the beings around them.
Buffy kicked out, but failed to connect. Her hip twisted. A shot of pain rushed up her side. Her attackers took the advantage. With a single gasp of protest, Buffy was dragged into the dark depths as if swallowed by a giant burrowing animal.
0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0
A STEAMY MAZE ... vertical, diagonal, horizontal tubes, bridges ...
Buffy strained to see Dawn, who was behind her. They were being pushed right along at a daunting pace. One of the two Suliban who pushed them along had Buffy's plasma pistol.
Sweat drained down their faces. The surroundings were getting hotter and steamier, though the Suliban didn't seem affected at all—
What was that? An energy field?
Buffy blinked as a fizzing light half blinded her. She fought to adjust.
T'Pol! And Trip—in a box of some kind, with a force field locking them in.
The Suliban operatives yanked them to a stop. One of the Suliban worked a handheld device that caused the energy field to snap down. Then that same Suliban reached for Dawn and pulled her inside the chamber and left her with T'Pol and Tucker,
Buffy noticed that these two weren't dressed the same as the two who had infiltrated the Enterprise. Of course, that didn't mean they weren't the same two.
The Suliban stepped out and raised the electrical shield again.
From inside, Tucker stepped forward toward Buffy, but there was no hope to break through the force field. T'Pol gave her no such concern. Instead, she seemed to be saying with her eyes I told you so.
Buffy let herself be led away without further struggle, she needed to know what she was up against, she needed information. The Suliban pulled her down a conduit to some steps, then down the steps. She was drawn through three locked doors and a small hatch. Thoroughly disoriented by the time they stopped, she found herself in a chamber with beds, computers, piles of clothing, tables and chairs, and clutter.
Buffy looked around critically and got an idea about this place. It reminded her of the Initiative. The two Suliban finally let her have her arms back. Without a word or gesture, they turned and left her alone in this chamber—which probably meant there was no easy way out. Judging from the way they came in, she might be lost down here for weeks before she found her way to the surface.
"You're looking for Klaang," a female voice said in perfect English. "Why?"
Buffy turned, looked. Neither of the Suliban had come back or spoken. Who had?
"Who are you?" Buffy wondered.
The shadows behind a stack of boxes shifted. A woman stepped out. Strikingly lovely and definitely human, the woman strode toward Buffy, studying the Slayer as she came.
"My name is Sarin. Tell me about the people who took Klaang off your ship."
"I was hoping you could tell me," Buffy reversed. "They looked a lot like your friends outside."
She stepped toward him. "Where were you taking him?"
"How come you don't look like your friends?" Buffy wondered.
She was uncomfortably close now. "Would you prefer I did?" she asked in a sultry tone.
"What I'd prefer," Buffy said, "is that you give me Klaang back."
"So you could take him where?"
"Home," Buffy said. "We were just taking him home."
Sarin was now inches away. Less. She seemed to be gauging Buffy. Buffy was returning the favor.
"You'd better be careful," Buffy murmured. "I may not be bigger, but I've dealt with things a lot stronger than you."
Sarin moved until they were very close and her breath brushed Buffy's cheek. "If you're thinking of harming me, Millennial, I'd advise against it."
Buffy stopped. "Millennial?"
"Did you think you were the only one chosen to live for a thousand years?"
"I wasn't chosen," Buffy said. "My sister was, she chose me to accompany her through that lifetime. I will simply live for a thousand years while she has the gifts."
"I see," Sarin responded with a nod. "So why were you taking Klaang home?"
"Nothing going," Buffy responded. "Unless you tell me some things …"
Sarin pressed her lips to Buffy's, forcefully and with purpose. Buffy coolly accepted what was happening and bothered to relax enough that Sarin might get discouraged sooner.
Sarin stepped back rather abruptly. Her face began to melt. A moment later, she was Suliban.
"I take it your Millennial gift has to come from close contact," Buffy said.
"You would be correct," Sarin replied.
"You're Suliban," Buffy said, giving Sarin a pretense of the shock she was probably going for.
"I was a member of the Cabal," Sarin said, "but not anymore. The price of evolution is too high."
"Evolution?"
Carefully, she moved away, no longer meeting his eyes. "Some of my people are so anxious to 'improve' themselves that they've lost perspective."
"Since you are Millennial," Buffy said, "you know I'm not lying to you. Now what?"
"Klaang was carrying a message to his people."
"How do you know that?"
"I gave it to him."
"What kind of message?"
"The Suliban have been staging attacks within the Klingon Empire," Sarin told Buffy. "Making it appear that one faction is attacking another. Klaang was bringing proof of this to his High Council. Without that proof, the Empire could be thrown into chaos."
"Why would the Suliban want that?" Buffy wondered.
"The Cabal doesn't make decisions on its own," Sarin went on, more anxious to tell him things. "They're simply soldiers fighting a temporal cold war."
"You mean they're taking orders from the future?" Buffy asked as Sarin looked at her surprised. "My sister and I met a group from the future, during Earth's first contact with Vulcan, intending to preserve their timeline."
"You are correct again," Sarin replied.
Sarin turned looked to Buffy, her face firm with conviction. "We can help you find Klaang," she said quickly. "But we don't have a starship. You'll have to take us with you!"
A blinding flash of blue light discharged between them. A computer station at Buffy's elbow exploded into shards and drove her sideways. She reached for Sarin and pulled her out of the blast area.
Another weapon blast struck even closer. Two Suliban skittered across the ceiling, firing weapons at them!
It didn't take a genius to understand that the secret base had been breached and these weren't the same two Suliban who had brought Buffy here.
Sarin's Suliban came streaking in from a doorway, firing as they ran, but the other Suliban seemed to have physical advantages. They skimmed the walls and ceiling like insects.
All hell broke loose. Buffy dragged Sarin toward the way they'd come in, assuming she would have the sense to lead her out through those tubes—
"Get us out!" Buffy ordered. "Dawn, can protect us."
In fact, she had a shortcut. Five seconds later, they were out in the main access level, being sprayed by geothermals and burned by the fritzing electrical screen that blocked off the Enterprise landing party. Behind them, the battle raged—Suliban against Suliban.
One of Sarin's operatives fell dead just inches behind Buffy, while the other exchanged handweapon fire with the two attackers. Sarin raised a weapon now that Buffy hadn't even known she possessed, and began returning fire, blocking blast after blast that might've taken Buffy's head off.
Sarin's other operative followed them out, rushing frantically along a bridge, firing as he went. He blasted one of the two attackers, but was caught in crossfire and killed by the second invader.
That left Buffy and Sarin on their own. "We have to get that energy field down," Buffy said. "Once it is down, Dawn can use her Millennial gifts to help protect us."
The Suliban attacker drove Buffy and Sarin into hiding with his wild firing, then opened on the force field with the Enterprise crewmen behind it. They dove for cover, but there wasn't any. All they could do was crouch with each other as the field disrupted in blinding displays of free energy.
At Buffy's side, Sarin took the initiative and stood clear. She fired openly at the attacker's body and blew him off his feet. With that window of opportunity, she rushed to the control panel of the force field and worked it with some kind of code.
The field fell! The crew flooded out, Dawn first with her hand on Tucker's chest. She held out her arm and she fired a blast of electrical energy at the attacking Suliban.
Sarin yanked open a panel that turned out to be a locker. She started handing T'Pol, Buffy and Tucker their plasma pistols!
"Where is your vessel?" Sarin asked.
"On the roof! Docking port three!"
Dawn spotted two more Suliban, defying gravity, crawling along the pipe! She fired another electrical blast, temporarily halting their advance.
"This way!" Sarin called. She led them in a completely confusing direction, one of the Suliban dropped and landed only a pace from Buffy and Dawn.
Buffy lashed out, and the Suliban sprang out of reach and out of sight with a heightened agility that startled even Sarin.
But here were two more Suliban—dressed like Sarin's associates and firing at the other Suliban!
Flashes of weapons fire illuminated the distance. The Starfleet team plowed forward after Sarin, ducking and running, navigating the wild jungle of pipes and buttresses.
Sarin reached a massive vertical tube, hit a control. A large pipe opened before them. Inside was a circular platform a few feet above the deck. Buffy hustled Tucker and T'Pol into the hole. Then she reached for Dawn.
Weapons fire streaked in from hundreds of feet away.
"Dawn!" Buffy called, and shoved her sister onto the platform, then piled in after her. Under them, the platform began to rumble and shift with the rush of thermal energy. Sarin was doing something with a control box. Was this an elevator?
Sarin moved toward the platform. She reached out to climb aboard. A blast struck her square in the back.
A Suliban stood across the area, his weapon trained on her. He fired again just as his eyes met Buffy's.
Sarin fell hard. The points of impact on her back glowed and sizzled as they burned their way through her writhing body.
Buffy launched launched off the platform, followed by Dawn. Dawn, with her hand firmly planted on the console that Sarin had been using, provided covering fire and drove the Suliban back while Buffy knelt at Sarin's side.
The Suliban took cover behind an outcropping of twisted pipes, but he was more persistent than the others and didn't run.
Beneath Buffy's hands, the female Suliban was dying.
"Find Klaang," Sarin murmured raggedly.
Mercifully, she lost consciousness as the wounds in her body continued to glow, burn, and grow, eating her from the inside out.
"Dawn!" Buffy bolted to his feet. She hoped it would be quick for Sarin. She could give her no more now.
Buffy motioned for her sister, and together they jumped back onto the trembling platform. She slid the hatch shut.
The moment she did that, the platform blasted upward through the shaft, driving them to their knees, propelled by a rolling pillar of steam.
In seconds the hot steam was blown away by an arctic blast. Archer forced his eyes open and saw snow blanketing the landing dock. They'd made it!
The platform shot up and stopped a full two feet over the dock. The Starfleet team was thrown into a pile, but alive. Steam blasted out in all directions under them, billowing into the frozen air.
"Let's go!" Buffy called over the whine of wind and blowing ice.
"Where's the pod?" Dawn called.
"Over here!" Tucker waved and pointed.
T'Pol, though, called louder over the wind and pointed in a different direction. "No, this way!"
Buffy weighed the two options, then picked T'Pol's direction. She was the only one who had ever been here before. She made the bet and pointed. "Come on!"
As the four of them headed toward an obscured shape with two lights that might indeed be the shuttle, Buffy brought the communicator up, flipping it as she ran. "Lieutenant Reed, this is Summers! Come in!"
"zzzzzzkkkkkggggaaazzzk."
"We're up on the roof! You need to get up here as quickly as possible! Where are you? Emergency evacuation! Reed!"
The communicator buzzed frantically.
Suliban soldiers appeared only seconds after they skidded onto the frozen deck.
Time seemed to crawl when a blast rocketed past him.
The wind began to clear. Blowing snow flattened into a sea, and the docking platform opened before them—empty! The obscured shape had been nothing but an approach shield!
"Like I said," Tucker shouted, "it's over there!"
Another blast of weapons fire sliced the air.
"Dawn!" Buffy yelled and felt her sister place her hand on her chest.
They kept searching for the shuttle, this time following Tucker through the storm of snow and weapons fire, firing all the way. Dawn fired energy across the platform toward the place where the Suliban shots were coming from.
A darkened form, sheeted and blistered with ice, suddenly flashed with blue energy before them. The shuttlepod! The Suliban weapons fire lit up the skin of the pod and gave the Starfleet team a clear beacon to safety.
T'Pol circled around Buffy and Dawn and pounded on the shuttle window. Why was she doing that?
The emergency hatch began to crack open, popped out a few inches, and swung wider. Air gushed with equalization and temperature change.
The Suliban were closing in.
Reed pulled T'Pol in and then Tucker. Dawn placed moved her hand Buffy's chest to the side of the shuttlepod and with her free hand she pushed her sister toward Reed. Reed pulled Buffy inside. "Dawn," he said, "come on."
Dawn fired one last show of energy and then dove for Reed who pulled her inside.
"The starboard thruster's down!" Mayweather spat.
"Ignore it." Buffy said. "Take us up. And open a channel. Summers to Enterprise, we'll be docking in a few minutes."
"Did you find anything out?" Archer asked over the comm.
"Not much," Buffy replied. "Just to be on the safe side, have Dr. Phlox meet us in decon."
"Acknowledged. Is someone wounded?"
"Not that I know of," Buffy replied. "But its better safe than sorry."