Planet X.
by Michael Jan Friedman.
Prologue.
"I WILL BE a new person," Erid Sovar told his friends, savoring the warmth of the afternoon sun on his face. "I will be a person this world has never seen before."
His companions laughed good-naturedly and reminded him that everyone is like that-a person the world has never seen before. And they said that was true even before a person went on his adulthood quest.
But Erid wouldn't have his enthusiasm dampened. "I will be truly different," he said. "I will be so different from anyone else, you won't know me when you see me again."
They laughed again. And this time, he laughed with them.
Over the next several hours, Erid and his friends completed their hike into the barren highlands of Ra'ad Cuhloor. At the doorstep of the gigantic Vuuren Pass, they paused to eat something. While Erid prepared himself for the task ahead, his friends traded scandalous stories about him and laughed even harder than before.
Then, as the sun began to set, he hugged each of his companions and said goodbye to them. After all, he was certain they would never see him again-at least, not as the Erid Sovar they had known.
Continuing his journey on his own, he mused that one other should have been there to say goodbye to him. Unfortunately, that one was gone from his life forever. It was best to forget about him, the youth told himself, and to move on.
Without benefit of food or water, Erid made the long climb up to Otros Paar, the legendary Field of Heaven. When he got there, he saw the dozen tall, lonely stacks of rocks that awaited him.
Erid chose the pile farthest from the ruddy light of the setting sun and, therefore, nearest the light of the sun that would rise the next morning. Then he climbed the rocks, laid one on top of the other in ancient times, until he reached the highest and most precarious of them.
Sitting, he crossed his legs. Then he took a breath and composed himself, his light clothing barely any help against the cutting lash of the wind. Putting aside all thoughts of the life he had led to that point, thoughts both good and bad, he began to sing.
It was the way it had been done by his ancestors for the last seven hundred and fifty years. It was what tradition demanded of him. And Erid was only too eager to comply.
So he sat there, alone under the terrible and unexpected brightness of the stars, and sang psalms to the inclinations of his spirit. Nor was it like any other spirit in all the universe-his elders had assured Erid of that again and again.
All he had to do was sing the song, they had said, and he would find the elements that made him unique ... the elements that finally and irrevocably made him Erid Sovar.
For a brief time, the stars were obscured by a herd of gray clouds. Erid felt a cold, eventually numbing sizzle of rain, but he sang his way through it. Then the rain stopped, and the clouds dissipated, leaving only a few breeze-rippled puddles as evidence of their passing.
As he sat there shivering, he was again haunted by thoughts of the one who should have been with him at Vuuren Pass. Anger and resentment rose in him. And pain as well.
No, he told himself. You must clear your mind, driving away such thoughts as the clouds have been driven from the sky.
Closing his eyes, Erid dropped deeper into his song, seeking solace. He wrapped it about him like a cloak against the chill, and in time his thoughts became pure again.
He pursued mystery after mystery, seeking who he was and who he might yet be. He came up with questions, a great many of them, but nothing at all in the way of answers.
Not at first, anyway.
Then, with the first pale hint of dawn, a change began to take place in Erid. As the wind lost its edge and the land grew still, the answers he craved started to come to him, one after the other-slowly at first, and then in a dizzying, breathtaking rush.
The youth felt a rush of confidence, a heady unfolding of grand potentials and possibilities. With great satisfaction, he realized that he was doing what he had set out to do-shedding one existence and donning another. Finally, the song having served its purpose, he stopped singing-but the feelings of joy and transformation continued.
Now the sun was rising over the uneven line of the horizon, its warmth moving down Erid's body like a lover's caress. It immersed his hands and his feet, then took the chill from the stone surface beneath him. He breathed deeply again and at last opened his eyes.
The world was ... beautiful. Even this place, with its dark, graceless flats and slopes and rock piles, with its stubborn refusal to support lif-it was as beautiful as anything he had seen.
His teachers were right, Erid thought. There had been a new way of seeing things locked inside him, a way that belonged to him alone. And all he had needed to do to find it was to follow their path.
Wishing to share his feelings with his friends, knowing how glad they would be to see him, Erid uncrossed his legs and tried to dismount from the rock pile. However, his limbs wouldn't cooperate. They were stiff and awkward from his long night's vigil.
He had to go slow, to allow his feet time to find the niches between the stones. As the light moved down the ancient pile, so did he-little by little, rock by rock, his legs tingling painfully as the circulation began to return to them.
Then one of his feet slipped and missed its niche, and the rest of Erid followed it with amazing quickness. The next thing he knew, he was lying on the ground, the side of his head feeling raw and bludgeoned.
He touched his fingertips to his temple. They came away with a purplish smudge on them. Blood, he thought vaguely. I'm bleeding?
But even that couldn't dim Erid's jubilation. Rolling over onto his belly, he raised himself on his hands and knees. Then, laughing at his helplessness, he hauled himself to his feet.
Turning, he saw the place where Otros Paar descended into the Vuuren Pass. With his back to the rising sun, he set out in that direction.
At first, it got easier and easier, as the blood rushed back into his legs. He made his way past one stack of rocks and then another. But after a while, Erid's legs began to feel heavy again.
Sensing that something was wrong, he looked down at them. Was it his imagination, or were the veins in his legs swelling?
As he pondered the question, feeling a tiny trickle of fear running down his spine, he realized it wasn't just his legs that felt heavy. His arms felt that way too.
Weighted down. And thick. Swollen, somehow. And their veins were popping out as if they wanted to burst through his smooth bronze skin.
Erid shook his head helplessly. It didn't make sense. There were no poisonous animals lurking this high up, no toxic plants he might have brushed against. And if he had eaten something bad for him the day before, he would have known it long before this.
It didn't make sense at all. And yet, his veins and arteries were swelling before his eyes, standing out under his flesh like metal cables.
But, strangely, Erid felt no pain. Even the numbness had gone away. The only discomfort he felt was the sensation of weightiness.
He swallowed, his throat dry with fear. He could feel the vessels in his neck and his temples were swelling, too, now-and that wasn't all. His flesh was beginning to darken around them, turning a hideous shade of purple-except in his fingers, which remained their natural bronze somehow.
What's going on? Erid wondered, his heart pounding savagely against his ribs. What's happening to me?
At that moment, he chanced to look into one of the puddles left by the night's rainshowers. In it, he saw his reflection, almost as clearly as he might have seen it in a mirror.
He was hideous, his blood vessels enlarged and darkening all over his face, his long, narrow brush of blue-black hair starting to thin and fall out. As he staggered away from the sight of himself, repulsed beyond words, he heard someone screaming.
It took Erid some time to realize it was him.
He fell to his knees, too weak and scared to support himself any longer. Only his fingers remained normal, resisting whatever had befallen him. Staring at them, he tried to hang on to the remnants of his sanity. Then something happened to his fingertips as well.
They began to glow with a pale, hazy light. Erid studied them, wondering what would happen next. He wasn't left wondering for long.
A brilliant white beam shot out suddenly from one of his fingertips and struck a nearby stack of rocks-shattering it with explosive force. He stared at the stunted pile that remained.
Did I really do that? he asked himself.
Then, before the fragments created by the first beam could stop rolling, a beam projected from another finger and hit the ground. It pulverized the rocky surface and sent a blinding spray of pebbles into his face.
Erid got up and staggered backward, eyes watering, trying to hold his hands as far away as possible-but a third beam shot over his shoulder, missing his ear by only a few inches. Then another shot out, and another and another after that, all of them losing themselves in the blue-green heavens.
But what if one of them hits me? he wondered. If these beams can shatter rocks, what will they do to flesh and blood?
Unfortunately, there was nowhere Erid could run where the beams wouldn't follow. They were coming from parts of his body, after all-or, anyway, the wretched thing his body had become.
The beams began to manifest themselves faster and faster, like a pair of fireworks wheels on Tala Day. One after another, the surrounding rock piles burst apart and littered the landscape with their gravel. But as terrified as Erid was, as shaken to his bones, he couldn't help but be fascinated by the sight as well.
Where is all this power coming from? he asked helplessly. How could it have gotten inside me?
He had barely completed the thought when there was a burst of white-hot splendor, beams jumping from all ten of his fingers with a fury that dwarfed anything that had gone before. He stumbled backwards, hit a rock with his heel, and sprawled on the ground.
But when Erid looked at his hands again, the beams were gone. His fingers had stopped glowing. They were normal again.
It was as if the nightmare had passed-as if it had never happened in the first place. Then he looked at his arms, with their huge, purple blood vessels, and knew in his heart that the nightmare was just beginning.
Chapter One.
SECURITY OFFICER MARCO PALMIERI shone his palm light down the long, dimly lit corridor, one of a multitude of corridors he had patrolled since his arrival at Starbase 88.
Palmieri didn't see anyone attempting to break into one of the cargo bays. He didn't see anyone sabotaging any of the internal sensor nodes. He didn't see anyone, period.
No surprise, he thought. There was never anyone there to see.
Palmieri had shipped out from Earth several months earlier, propelled by an academy graduate's dreams of excitement and adventure. After all, these were dangerous times, with the Dominion an ever-present threat and the Cardassians again at odds with the Federation.
But somehow, none of those dangers seemed to materialize on Starbase 88. Instead of finding excitement and adventure, Palmieri had managed to draw the most routine assignment he could imagine, in one of the least inspiring places in the galaxy.
Naturally, he had mentioned his problem to Security Chief Clark, his superior. But she had been less than sympathetic.
After all, Clark had reminded him, Starbase 88 received just as many potential troublemakers as any other Federation space station. If it didn't experience the turmoil other stations did, that was a good thing-a sign that Palmieri and his colleagues were doing their jobs.
At the time, Palmieri had found it difficult to argue with the woman's logic-and it was no easier now. But that didn't make his inactivity any easier to take.
Coming to the end of the corridor, he turned right and illuminated another walkway with his palm light. Like all the others, the passage was orderly and unpopulated, devoid of anything that might make a security officer's heart beat faster.
Palmieri sighed. Maybe it was time to ask for a transfer. He knew that berths on starships were hard to come by, but there had to be some starbase somewhere in need of an eager if untested security officer.
Suddenly, his tricorder began to beep. Taking it out of its loop on his tunic, he checked its tiny screen to see why. What he saw made him wonder if the tricorder was on the fritz.
It was indicating a temporal flux artifact in Cargo Bay Six. But that didn't make sense. The base's security station routinely scanned for such phenomena. If they had ...
"Clark to Palmieri," came a voice, shattering his thought.
Dutifully, he tapped the communications badge he wore on his chest. "Palmieri here, Chief."
"Are you getting a temporalflux reading down there?"
"As a matter of fact," said Palmieri, "it just registered on my tricorder. You don't know anything about it?"
"No more than you do," Clark told him. "Go check it out, but be careful. If there's anything at all to be concerned about, let me know immediately."
"Will do," he said. "Palmieri out."
Obviously, he thought, the chief wasn't seriously worried about the temporalflux reading, or she would have insisted on checking it out herself. Frowning, he put his tricorder away and headed for Cargo Bay Six.
It wasn't far. Palmieri took a left at the end of the corridor and found the entrance a few meters down on the left.
Laying his hand against the security pad on the bulkhead, he watched the door slide aside. It was dark in the bay, but he had his palm light. Palmieri took a few steps inside and played the light over the uneven terrain of stacked cargo containers.
Nothing to see. But when was there ever?
Taking out his tricorder, the security officer scanned the bay from one side to the other. There was evidence of flux, all right-not a lot, but enough to make him wary. He looked around again with the help of his light, seeking the exact location of the phenomenon.
Abruptly, without warning, the cargo bay blazed with a brilliant blue-white light. Instinctively, Palmieri threw a hand up to protect his eyes. Losing his balance, he staggered backward a step.
By the time he righted himself, the source of the illumination was gone. The bay was dark again-the neon afterimage on his retina the only evidence the flareup had happened at all.
Then he glanced at his tricorder, and he realized the afterimage wasn't the only evidence. For a moment, apparently, the temporalflux reading had gone off the scale. Now it was back to a trace level again.
Strange, Palmieri thought. I'd better let the chief know about it.
But before he could tap his communicator, he heard a sound. Something muttered. A curse, he thought.
Whirling, he saw he was no longer alone in the cargo bay. There were shadowy figures at the far end among the largest containers, where before there had been nothing and no one. From what he could tell, they hadn't noticed him yet.
"Where are we?" one of them asked the others.
"Weren't we just standing in the woods outside the mansion?" someone else asked.
"I've got a better question," said a third voice. "Where are our wee timehook devices?"
A fourth one spoke up gruffly. "Gone, it looks like. And don't that take the flamin' cake."
Putting away his tricorder and drawing his phaser, the security officer took a breath. Then he played his palm light on the figures.
"Hey!" one of them rasped at him. "Whaddaya tryin' ta do, blind us with that thing?"