Vaughn pushed one side of his coat back, allowing him to draw his phaser. He tapped at the control surface on the top of the weapon, configuring it to a powerful but nonlethal setting. He turned around to face back the way he had come, leveled the phaser, and fired. A shaft of yellow-red light streaked into the surface of the roadway, at a point about ten meters away, its high-pitched whine loud in the almost-quiet of the empty landscape. Vaughn shot the beam for ten seconds, then released the trigger. The point on the road at which he had fired glowed red. He checked the tricorder and read liquefaction of stone composites and binding materials. It proved little, he knew, though it at least seemedto lend credence to the reality of his surroundings.
Turning back toward the tower, Vaughn stepped away, raised the phaser, and fired again. He held the beam for longer this time. When he stopped, a section of the wall glowed red. He worked the tricorder once more, scanning the tower. Again, he read liquefied stone in the affected—
A life-form showed on the display. Vaughn adjusted the scan and located it on the roof of the tower. It read as Vahni Vahltupali.
Vaughn slipped the straps of the water containers from his shoulders, lowering the containers onto the roadway. Then he unburdened himself of the bedroll, also setting it down on the road. He reset his phaser to heavy stun, then strode back to the tower. Cautiously, he moved through the open doorway, his weapon poised at the level of his waist. Inside, the air felt slightly cooler than the air outside, and slightly damp. He waited a few seconds for his eyes to adjust fully to the dimmer lighting, then turned to his left and started up the stone stairs that ran along the wall. The setting matched his recollection of the tower on the Vahni world.
Climbing the stairs as quietly as he could, he took three minutes to reach the top. He stood with his back to the inside wall, beside the open doorway that led out onto the roof. He consulted the tricorder again, verifying the presence of the Vahni. Then he closed and pocketed the tricorder, raised his phaser higher, and stepped through the doorway.
Ventu—or somebody or something that looked just like him—stood on the far side of the roof, a cloth bag at his feet. Vaughn slowly moved forward, observing and saying nothing. As he did, a flash of color and form flowed across the Vahni’s body. “Again, you are welcome,” came the slightly mechanical voice of the translator. Vaughn peered down at his chest and saw only his tattered uniform under his open coat, but not the optical mesh that had comprised part of the Vahni translation devices. Nor did the interface between the mesh and the universal translator hang in a small casing at his side.
Vaughn looked up. “Who are you?” he demanded.
All at once, the tower thrust sideways, surging to Vaughn’s right. He and Ventu were thrown from their feet in the opposite direction. Even as he fell, a sense of déjà vu overwhelmed him, just as it had back in the city with Harriman. He dropped the phaser as he brought his hands up in time to break his fall, but the left side of his forehead impacted the stone floor of the roof. Explosive sounds pounded the air around him, sounds he knew to be the products of a quake. He had lived through all of this before.
The tower continued to shake violently. Vaughn pushed himself up, fighting to rise onto his knees, and to his feet. He looked over at Ventu and saw vacant, white swirls blooming on his flesh, and Vaughn vividly remembered the horrible, silent screams of the Vahni.
He eyed the doorway, and briefly considered bolting through it and attempting to escape the tower before it collapsed. But he had little time, he knew, and if he got caught within the tower when it went down, he might be killed. He looked back at Ventu, but instead of trying to help him, as he had back on the Vahni world, Vaughn raced to the wall that rimmed the roof. Beyond the tower, he saw no Vahni city, nothing but the empty, rolling geography of this gray world. He gazed upward, and saw the sky filled not with the awful sight of a shattering moon, but only the constant cloud cover that haunted this place.
The tower shifted dramatically, nearly knocking Vaughn from his feet once more, but he grabbed the top of the wall and held himself up. He peered over at Ventu—or the masquerade of Ventu—and saw what he had seen a week ago: fear, embodied in the empty whorls cycling across the Vahni’s flesh, and the tentacles wrapped tightly around his upper body. Knowing what the next few moments would bring, and not wanting to chance the reality of the situation, Vaughn decided to protect Ventu. If they could make it through the destruction of the tower, then maybe Vaughn could get some of his questions answered.
With the roof moving back and forth beneath his feet, he staggered over to Ventu. “We have to protect ourselves,” Vaughn yelled. To demonstrate, he lifted his arms up around his head. “Ventu,” he screamed through the din, “protect your head!” Back on the Vahni world, Ventu had died from a massive brain injury. Maybe this time, Vaughn could—
That was when the tower collapsed.
Vaughn could not tell whether or not he had lost consciousness, but the next perception he had was that the quake had ceased, as had the thunderous noise accompanying it. He opened his eyes and raised his head, finding himself atop a pile of rubble that had once been the tower. A veil of dust hung in the air, and the debris beneath him ticked and popped as bits of rubble fell toward the ground. He had been here before.
Slowly, Vaughn moved, taking inventory of his body. He felt familiar aches, particularly in his limbs. What isn’t familiar here?he thought.
As he began a cautious descent, the urge to call the names of Bowers and Roness rose in his mind; that was what he had done back on the world of the Vahni. But now, when he peered out past the remains of the destroyed tower, he did not see a Vahni city, its pedestrian ways clogged with frantic crowds, smoke flowing skyward from several points, violet lasers shooting up and warning of the emergency. Instead, he spied only a barren landscape, with a narrow belt of roadway receding into the distance.
Moving carefully, Vaughn maneuvered down the mound of debris. Several stones tumbled from the pile, but he managed to avoid a similar fate. Minutes passed, until finally he reached the ground.
Vaughn looked down at himself. His coat was filthy. His uniform, torn open in a few places and covered with dirt, resembled, but did not match exactly, his uniform after the tower collapse back on the Vahni world. Cuts laced his hands, blood seeping from the wounds. He reached up and felt at his temple, his fingers coming away tacky with blood.
Vaughn circled the heap of rubble, looking this time not for Bowers and Roness, but for Ventu. He waved his way through the thick cloak of dust enclosing the scene. A third of the way around, where before he had come across Bowers and Roness and the other Vahni, this time he found nothing.
He continued walking. Farther along, he discovered the body of Ventu. The Vahni lay along the side of the tower wreckage, about three meters up. His tentacles draped lifelessly across the broken stone. Cuts and abrasions covered his body in numerous places, marring his beautiful red-and-blue flesh. And something had clearly fallen onto the headlike projection atop his frame; ichor oozed from a gaping wound that split the ring of his eye.
Vaughn pulled his tricorder from his coat, grateful that it had not been lost. He scanned the inert form of Ventu. The sensor readings confirmed the body as Vahni; there were no signs of life.
A tremendous sense of loss flooded over Vaughn, threatening to pull him down into its dark depths. Despite being convinced that whoever or whatever sprawled dead before him was not truly Ventu, the fact remained that Ventu had perished—not now, not here, but a week ago, on the Vahni world. Ventu, and three thousand other Vahni, and then Ensign Roness, all gone.