Текст книги "Reap the Whirlwind"

Автор книги: David Mack

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

24

Captain Nassir listened to the relentless, brutal cadence of the Shedai’s hammering exploration of the riverbed. Each impact arrived stronger and louder than the last and violently shook the Sagittarius. According to Crewman Torvin’s acute hearing, in less than two minutes the Shedai’s crushing assault would reach them and shatter the tiny scout ship’s unshielded primary hull.

Lieutenant zh’Firro was back at the helm, and Sorak manned the weapons console. The modifications to the phaser emitter were complete; the engineers, however, were having difficulty mustering enough energy to make a shot that would count. Phasers normally drew their power from the warp reactor; the ship’s emergency-reserve batteries had proved woefully inadequate to meet the power demands of a main phaser bank.

Another roll of deep, watery thunder trembled the ship. It was a race now. Either the engineers integrated the new fuel pod and brought back main power in time for a phaser shot to fend off the attack, or the Shedai would strike an unanswered killing blow.

On the edge of his vision, Nassir noticed someone walking stiffly onto the bridge. He turned and saw Lieutenant Commander McLellan taking one gingerly step after another. “Permission to return to duty, Captain,” she said, and flashed a taut smile.

“Permission granted,” he said, elated to see her whole again. “Good to see you, Bridy Mac.”

The slender brunette limped to his side and turned her gaze upward as another thunderstrike percussed the ship. Marshaling the same kind of deadpan gallows humor that Nassir had come to expect from Terrell, McLellan pointed upward and quipped, “Planning on doing something about that, sir?”

Just as dryly, he replied, “Why? Is it bothering you?”

“I could do without it,” she said.

He shrugged. “Give it another minute. One way or another, I expect it’ll stop soon.”

“Good to know,” she said with a nod, and folded her hands behind her back to await the inevitable.

A vital thrumming resonated through the Sagittarius as the bridge consoles flared back to life and the overhead lights surged back to full power. “Go!” Nassir snapped at zh’Firro. Then he spun toward Sorak: “Fire at will!”

With a flurry of her hands across the helm, zh’Firro engaged the main thrusters and rocketed the Sagittarius vertically out of the water. On the static-filled main viewer, a colossal spiderlike monstrosity straddled the river, plunging two of its tentacles into the water in alternating strikes. It immediately recoiled as the Sagittarius emerged from the river.

The shriek of the phaser bank’s discharge was like music to Nassir. He watched its shimmering blue beam of energy slam into the gigantic creature’s body. The behemoth staggered, retreated for a moment, and snapped one of its tentacles forward like a whip. It elongated faster than Nassir could track, and only after the ship echoed with the ring of impact and heaved under his feet did he realize they’d been physically struck.

“Hull breach,” Sorak reported. “Sealing that compartment.”

“Sayna,” Nassir said. “Let’s get out of here.”

The Andorian zhen worked at her console and became visibly alarmed. “We’re being held, sir.” Fighting with another control, she added, “Correction: We’re being pulled toward the creature.”

They all looked at the viewer. The Shedai’s tentacle was still fully extended. “It harpooned us,” Nassir said.

“Another signal, Captain,” Sorak said. “A second Shedai.”

Palming the sweat off the top of his bald pate, Nassir asked, “I don’t suppose the phasers are still online?”

Sorak reviewed the gauges above his console. “The emitter overloaded, just as Torvin predicted.”

Nassir was about to consider the feasibility of actually using his ship to ram the Shedai holding it, when McLellan pointed at the main viewer. “Sir, look!”

The second Shedai, whose shape was constantly in flux, lashed out at the one that was holding the Sagittarius. It landed fierce, stabbing blows that impaled the spiderlike colossus, and fiery slashing attacks amputated the creature’s supporting appendages. Its “harpoon” retracted from the Sagittarius as the two titans collapsed in a writhing fury and sank into the muddy brown river.

“Free to navigate,” zh’Firro reported. Then she pointed the ship skyward and accelerated.

Nassir pressed a button on the arm of his chair and opened the intraship comm to the top deck. “Good work up there.”

“Thanks, Skipper,” Ilucci replied. “Main power’s up, but we’re still working on warp speed. You’ll have transporters in two, shields in five.”

“Hours?”

“Minutes, sir,” Ilucci clarified.

“Just what I wanted to hear, Master Chief.”

“Service with a smile, that’s us. Engineering out.”

The captain looked at McLellan. “Start looking for our people on the surface. As soon as we have transporter locks, I want them aboard.”

“Aye, sir,” she said, and walked with a stiff gait to the engineering console. While she worked scanning the planet’s surface, Nassir was relieved to see it recede on the main viewer. The fading away of the blue-green atmosphere to the star-flecked majesty of space felt to him like a homecoming.

“Captain,” McLellan said. “Lieutenant Xiong’s on the surface. I have a lock on his tricorder.”

Nassir moved to her side at the engineering console. “What about Terrell and Theriault?”

“Commander Terrell’s aboard the Rocinante,” she said, pointing at an icon on a map above her station. “They’re in an area with a lot of signal interference.”

Confused, the captain wondered aloud, “What are they doing? Why haven’t they left yet?”

From the other side of the small bridge, Sorak opined, “The most likely answer, Captain, is that they are continuing the search for Ensign Theriault.”

“Bridy,” Nassir said, “can you hail them?”

“It’ll take a few minutes,” she said. “I have to filter out the interference at their end.” Adjusting the dials in front of her, she added, “If it wasn’t for their energy signature, I never would’ve found them.”

Nassir nodded his understanding. “Do what you have to,” he said. “In the meantime, send Xiong’s coordinates to Ilucci. Then signal the lieutenant and have him beamed up. It’s time to go home.”

Gaps began to form in the walls of the alien city, riddling it with impromptu shortcuts, crawlspaces, and nooks. Theriault was grateful for one of those gaps, because it was the only cover near the star-shaped multiple intersection where she’d found herself cut off by battling giants in every passage.

Each physical form that was destroyed seemed to intensify the combat. The hulking bodies slammed each other back and forth with wild abandon, shattering towering ribs in the walls that provided critical structural support. With each cacophonous impact, Theriault worried that the structure would come down on top of her. Fear kept her huddled inside the meter-wide fracture in the wall, out of sight but still close enough to the edge to keep watch in case one of the passages cleared.

Four of the routes away from the intersection appeared to lead outside. A few seemed to lead only to other intersections. But one was unique, and it captivated her. At its end was a vast chamber steeped in a deep violet glow and inky shadows and resounding with a macabre groaning choir punctuated by keening atonal wails of noise. By her reckoning, that chamber was inside the massive domed structure that the Apostate had pointed out to her, the one he had called the First Conduit. If, as she suspected, it was linked to the artifacts that Starfleet had found throughout the Taurus Reach and the device that Xiong had found on the Tholian battleship, she wanted to see it up close.

A broken obsidian body slammed to the floor outside her crevice and shattered into billions of crystalline shards.

She recoiled—and felt something grab her shoulder. Instinct coupled with training made her duck, plant her feet, and throw her elbow backward. It hit something pliant, and she looked back to see a slim, handsome, fair-haired human man in civilian clothes holding his bloodied nose.

“Brilliant,” he said, his voice rendered nasal by the fact that he had pinched his nostrils shut.

Her hands covered her mouth, first out of surprise, then out of amusement. “Sorry,” she said, grinning apologetically. “Are you all right?”

“Mostly,” he said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. He offered her his other hand. “Hi, I’m Tim Pennington, journalist at large. I’m here to rescue you.”

She almost laughed out loud.

“You’re kidding, right?” “Um…I don’t think so.”

“Why would Starfleet send a reporter to rescue me?”

He shrugged. “Kind of a long story. I’ll tell it to you when we get back to the ship.”

Still slightly suspicious of this fortuitously arrived stranger, she asked, “How’d you even find me?”

Pennington reached behind him and pulled forward a Starfleet-issue tricorder. “A little help from your friends.”

Her eyes locked on to the tricorder. Making a visual observation of the peculiar chamber under the dome might have merited the risk of pressing on, but the ability to make a scan of it with a functioning tricorder was definitely worth it. She looked back across the intersection. The battle had shifted, and the passageway to the darkly shimmering enclosure was clear. Despite knowing that the situation could change at any moment, it was the chance she had been waiting for.

With a jerk of his head, he urged her, “Come on, time’s running out. Let’s go back.”

“No,” she said, grabbing his sleeve and pulling him with her into the intersection. “Let’s go forward.”

He’s undone us, raged the Wanderer. And for what? Flickers of life. Sparks that fade as soon as they are made.

She was high above the city, a sentient wisp tethered by a gossamer tendril to the dying shell of their collective corpus, watching and reporting on the tactics of the enemy.

She was an obsidian sentinel on a lower rampart, standing firm beside the Adjudicator, locked in a struggle both physical and essential with the unpredictable fury of the Myrmidon.

She was a blade of fire, searing and unstoppable, but already two transmogrifications behind the Thaumaturge, who squelched her blaze with his new body of frigid mist.

Flanking maneuvers, sneak attacks, holding actions. She directed a half-dozen more avatars, some gargantuan, others infinitesimal. Without the legions of the Nameless to keep the partisans of the Apostate in check, those Serrataal loyal to the Maker were taxed to their limits fending off the usurpers, who were more experienced and adept at dividing their essences.

Now the Apostate defends one of the Telinaruul within our own sanctum, she seethed. His blasphemies know no end.

Her mind’s eye sought him out, probed the galvanic textures of the conflict raging around her, questing for the malevolent presence of the betrayer. As she had suspected, he lingered close to the Telinaruul—then she noted with alarm that they were moving toward the heart of the Shedai’s power.

All her diverse forms evaporated like forgotten dreams as she focused herself into a single, fearsome guardian avatar. Rushing to intercept the Apostate and his fragile charges, she issued an urgent summons to the Maker and all her allies.

The Apostate guides the Telinaruul to the First Conduit, she warned them. He must be stopped.

A hundred minds followed hers toward the First Conduit. His treachery has gone far enough, the Wanderer decided. No member of the Serrataal had ever been permanently disincorporated, but the Wanderer resolved that the Apostate would be the first.

Lieutenant Ming Xiong rematerialized on the transporter pad of the Sagittarius before he’d even had time to rejoice at receiving a response signal to his tricorder’s emergency beacon. He had made the fortunate decision to keep the tricorder slung at his side ever since he’d made his survey of Jinoteur’s peculiar energy field and its connection to the planet’s flora; if he hadn’t, there might not have been time to retrieve it before the transporter beam had ensnared him.

He practically jumped off the pad onto the top deck. Cahow, who was manning the transporter console, recoiled instinctively at his energetic approach. “Welcome back, sir,” she said.

“Good to be back,” he said, scrambling over to the ladder. “Pardon me, have to get to the bridge!” She cocked a curious eyebrow at him but said nothing as he shimmied through the deck portal, planted his hands on the outside of the ladder, and slid down in one smooth motion. His boots struck the deck and produced a familiar, welcome metallic echo. He sprinted around the short curve of the main deck to the bridge.

The door slid open ahead of him, and he slowed, then lurched to a stop. Everyone on the bridge was too wrapped up in work to note his entrance.

“Range two hundred sixty-one million kilometers and closing,” Sorak noted dryly.

Nassir thumbed a comm switch on his chair’s armrest. “I need warp speed, Master Chief!”

“Workin’ on it, Skipper!”

“Captain,” Xiong said, “I’ve made a fascinating—”

“Bridy Mac,” Nassir said, ignoring Xiong. “Any contact with the Rocinante?”

“Negative, sir, still too much interference.”

Xiong was perplexed. The Rocinante? Pennington’s here? Putting aside his questions, he tried again to report his discovery on the planet. “Captain,” he said. “I need to tell you what I found on—”

“Later, Ming,” Nassir said. He looked over his shoulder at Sorak. “Are the shields up yet?”

Sorak flipped several switches and checked his display. “Affirmative, Captain. Operating at seventy-

one-point-three-percent power.”

“Helm,” Nassir said, “get ready to break orbit. Bridy, keep hailing the Rocinante.”

As the curve of the planet retreated from the main viewer, Xiong asked Nassir, “Sir, what’s going on?”

“The Klingon battle cruiser Zin’za just entered the system,” Nassir said. “And if we don’t go to warp in five minutes, it’ll rip us to shreds.”

25

Pennington followed Theriault inside the immense, hollow chamber at the end of the passage. He nearly collided with the redhead as she came to a sudden stop. Then he saw why.

Dominating the cathedral-like, nearly spherical enclosure was a machine larger and more bizarre than anything he had ever seen before. Its top and bottom halves were like mirror images of each other: hulking, twelve-pronged claws of shining obsidian. In the open space between them burned a globe of dark fire so intensely violet that it left a golden afterimage on Pennington’s retinas when he blinked and looked away. The entire space resonated with a macabre drone and a painful screeching.

“Give me the tricorder,” Theriault said, holding out her hand to him. He pulled the strap over his head and handed the device to her. As she began scanning the massive contraption, Pennington regained his wits long enough to raise his recorder and snap off several still images and some video.

A prismatic fury pulsed and scintillated inside the machine, revealing countless dark silhouettes twisting in its indigo flames. Pennington noted one form at the tip of each prong in the machine, while its center held a cluster of huddled shapes—all with the same unmistakable multilimbed anatomy.

“Tholians,” Pennington said as if it were an obscenity.

“I know,” Theriault said, watching the tricorder’s display as she slowly circled the machine. “They’re part of what makes this thing tick.” Just then the machine’s eerie disharmonies surged in volume and pitch, and high-frequency shrieks and wails surrounded them. Theriault winced momentarily and checked her tricorder again. “They’re in agony,” she said.

As if by reflex, Pennington replied, “Good.”

She turned her head and glared at him. “Excuse me?”

“What?” His temper flared. “I don’t care what Starfleet said about my story, the Tholians destroyed the Bombay.”

“That’s right,” Theriault said, her sweet demeanor replaced by righteous anger. “They did.” She pointed up at the fiery violet globe. “But those are sentient beings. I don’t care what your grudge is with their people, I’m not being rescued by someone who’d applaud torture.”

Shame warmed Pennington’s face as he stood accused in the purple glow of the machine’s fiery horrors. Her words stung him because they were true. Desperate voices, screeching like drill bits chewing through steel, pierced the machine’s funereal groan. He hung his head and made himself imagine the sufferings of the beings inside the flames. “You’re right,” he said to Theriault. “I let my anger get away from me. I was wrong…. Iapologize.”

“If you really want to say you’re sorry, you can help me find a way to free them,” Theriault said as she resumed scanning the towering artifact.

At a loss, he watched her. “How?”

“Look for some kind of control interface,” she said.

A majestic voice, like the roar of falling water married to the rumble of a stirring volcano, quaked the cavernous chamber and brought the pair to a halt. “Your efforts are for naught. Only the Serrataal can command the First Conduit.”

Pennington turned, suddenly cognizant of an amber glow casting his own shadow far ahead of him.

Looming over him and Theriault was a spectral giant rising from, and seemingly composed of, a polychromatic cloud of vapor. Bands of light, like miniature aurorae, orbited its body, and a golden radiance spread upward behind it. Its countenance was masked in a blinding shine brighter than the sun.

While the petrified journalist stood all but Gorgonized in the colossal entity’s gaze, Theriault stepped between them and spoke to it in a familiar tone. “Can you control it?”

“I can.”

“Then you can free the beings inside it,” she said.

A hard note crept into the radiant one’s mountainous baritone. “Not without causing great harm to the Colloquium….The Kollotaan are your enemies. Why do you wish them freed?”

Pennington cut in, “Because your machine is hurting them. They’re being held against their will and tortured.” He noted Theriault’s sidelong glance of approval. “We believe both those acts to be immoral. And we’re begging you for their freedom.”

Me, begging mercy for Tholians, Pennington marveled. To his surprise, he suddenly felt less burdened than he had in months.

The shining titan directed his attention at Theriault. “Do you also plead for the Kollotaan’s freedom?”

“Yes,” she said. “Can you return them to their ship?”

“I can,” he said after a brief pause. “And I will.” He ascended above their heads and drifted toward the screaming machine. “The others are coming. There is nothing more you can do here, little sparks. Flee to your friends. My partisans and I will do our best to shield your escape.”

Theriault grasped Pennington’s shirt sleeve and pulled him back toward the passageway that led out of the chamber. At its threshold, she turned back and said to the being, “Thank you.”

His last word was an irresistible command: “Go.”

Another skull-sized chunk of broken stone ricocheted off the top of the Rocinante. Quinn ducked by reflex and watched sandy debris scatter onto the ground behind him. Crouched under his ship, he made a few final adjustments to the impulse motivator, slammed the access panel shut, and locked it in place.

He gathered his tools and hauled the heavy toolbox back toward the aft ramp, noting with concern the speed with which fractures spread through the surface on which his ship stood. His pace quickened as he climbed the ramp. Time to get the hell outta here.

The aft ramp lifted shut with a slow, pathetic whine as he stowed the toolbox in the main compartment, which still stank of scorched metal and burnt duotronic cables. From the cockpit he heard Terrell talking to someone on the comm. “Can you see where you are? Any landmarks outside?”

“Not yet,” a woman replied, her voice shaking as if she were talking while running. “We’re still looking for a way out.”

“Keep the channel open,” Terrell said. “As soon as we get a lock on you, we’ll come get you.”

“Will do,” the woman said as Quinn returned to the cockpit. Terrell acknowledged him with a questioning look.

Settling into his seat, Quinn said, “We’re mobile. What’s goin’ on?”

“He found her,” Terrell said. “Now they have to get into the open so we can evac them.”

Firing up the engines, Quinn said, “They better do it fast, this place is fallin’ apart.” Several gauges on Quinn’s console flickered sporadically as he tried to conduct his preflight check. He slapped the console, and everything stopped flashing.

A buzzing from the overhead panel alerted Quinn to an incoming signal on the ship-to-ship subspace channel. He patched it in to the main speaker and heard a woman’s voice squawk through a loud scratch of static. “Rocinante, this is the Sagittarius. Please respond.”

“This is Rocinante,” Quinn said. “Go ahead.”

The next voice on the channel was Captain Nassir’s. “Mr. Quinn, have you found Commander Terrell?”

“A-firmative,” Quinn replied. “He’s right here with me.”

“Then I recommend you lift off and follow us out of the system immediately,” Nassir said. “We have company—a Klingon battle cruiser. They’ll make orbit in less than two minutes.”

“No can do,” Quinn said, looking at Terrell to confirm they were in agreement. “We got a lead on your girl Theriault, and my friend Tim went in to get her.”

“Send us their coordinates,” Nassir said. “We’ll beam them up before we break orbit.”

“Sorry, Captain,” Terrell said. “Too much interference. We can’t get a signal clean enough for transport. We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

Nassir’s anxiety was apparent. “However you do it, if you aren’t under way in the next sixty seconds you’ll be going toe-to-toe with a Klingon battle cruiser.” In a more somber tone he added, “Clark, I’m serious—we have to go.”

Terrell muted the channel and looked at Quinn. “It’s your ship,” he said. “That means it’s up to you. If we don’t leave now, we’ll be an easy target for the Klingons.”

Guiding the ship forward out of its cover inside the hollow tower and back into the maelstrom of rain and lightning, Quinn said with conviction, “I ain’t leavin’ Tim here.”

“Then let’s go get him,” Terrell said. He reopened the channel to the Sagittarius. “Captain, we’re going in to get Pennington and Theriault. If you have to break orbit, go. We’ll take our chances with the Klingons.”

Quinn accelerated and slalomed the Rocinante through a flurry of lightning strokes. He glanced at the tracking display on the navigation computer and made a mental note of the general bearing and range to Pennington and Theriault’s communicator signal. A dense cluster of collapsing towers and causeways blocked a direct route, forcing him to circumnavigate the disintegrating metropolis.

He had almost forgotten that the subspace channel was still open when Nassir responded to Terrell’s last transmission. “Do what you have to, Clark,” the starship captain said. “We’ll keep the Klingons busy as long as we can. Sagittarius out.”

Closing the channel, Terrell muttered, “Vaya con Dios, Captain.” He held on to the console as Quinn banked sharply to avoid another bolt of electricity slashing across the sky. Concussions of thunder shook the small freighter constantly. Terrell winced in pain as he pressed an odd, fist-sized object against his savaged midsection. He grinned at Quinn. “Thanks for not giving up,” he said.

“Never an option,” Quinn said, rolling the ship over and around a falling tower.

Nodding, Terrell said, “I know what you mean. I couldn’t leave either if my best friend was in there.”

“He ain’t my best friend,” Quinn admitted, as much to himself as to Terrell. “He’s my only friend.”

Ancient seals had been broken and eldritch bonds sundered by the fires they were made to contain. The Apostate beheld the ire of the Kollotaan and saw not the savage race they had been aeons past but the sentient beings they had become and the fury with which they rejected their renewed bondage. They were united in one proud temper, strong in will, by nature opposed to the burden of the yoke.

With every Voice the Apostate parted from the First Conduit an avenue closed. Across the distant light-years, throughout the former possessions of the Shedai, Conduits recently awakened went dark, robbed of the Voices’ inspiration. Flee, he warned his partisans. While paths of choice remain.

Another Voice twisted and fought even as the Apostate sought to end its enslavement. These were creatures too fierce to be tamed, he was certain of it. How could the Wanderer have believed such as these would ever submit? Space-time folded and reshaped itself to fit his will, and instantly the great mass of imprisoned Kollotaan from the Conduit’s core were returned to their ship, along with two of their number who had been bonded to the nodes. More than a score continued to await their freedom.

Through the nodes that remained, an exodus began. Dozens of his allies among the Serrataal heeded his admonition to abandon this world; some, perhaps, even sensed what he intended to do.

At first he heard the jubilation of the Maker and her host, rejoicing at his partisans’ retreat, erroneously believing that it signaled their victory. Only too late did they realize what was being set in motion and converge upon him in numbers.

Of his faithful battalions, only the Myrmidon and the Thaumaturge remained at his side, awaiting the coming onslaught. The Apostate prepared to release two more Kollotaan from their nodes. Take these roads, he counseled his brothers. I will close them behind you.

We would remain, countered the Myrmidon. If we go, who will stand with you against the Maker?

The Apostate assured them, She will not stand. Where I am going, she will not follow…. Go.

His brothers obeyed, shed their avatars, and bade him farewell. Their subtle bodies passed through the nodes and made their transit across the cold gulf of space-time, to worlds ready to receive them with splendors befitting their stations. As soon as they were away, he released those nodes’ Kollotaan and shifted them back to their ship.

The Maker and her battle-wearied host surrounded him in the Conduit chamber. Their collective animosity had taken on a presence all its own; it was a radiant anger, glowing like an ember in the endless night. Yield, commanded the Maker.

I will not wear the colors of a penitent, the Apostate declared, punctuating his defiance with a flaring of the Conduit’s fire. When it receded and the flames banked themselves in the machine’s core, all could see that four more Kollotaan had been freed. Sixteen roads remain, he warned. Take them now.

A flood-crush of attacks assailed him. Most were of little consequence. The Sage had no weapons equal to him, and the Adjudicator and the Herald—though fearsome to the Telinaruul—were not warriors born. The Avenger and the Warden, however, existed to destroy and mete out punishment, and the Wanderer was a potent adversary in spite of her youth.

None, however, was on a par with the Maker, the oldest of the Serrataal and the only one older than the Apostate. Her power was plenary, and her touch alone could unmake any of them.

She struck in a flash of thought, an action of pure will. The attack was unstoppable, its effect irreversible.

Her loyal host recoiled in shock and horror. The blow had found its mark—and the Apostate was unbowed.

You cannot unmake me, he taunted the Maker. That age is past. Dead secrets have been resurrected, and I shall bow to you nevermore. In the hush that followed his proclamation, he freed another Kollotaan. Fifteen roads remain. I guarantee safe passage to all who depart now—and oblivion to all who remain.

The Maker trembled with rage at his heresy. Then she cast off her avatar and passed through the Conduit into exile.

So began the second exodus.

Legions of Serrataal abandoned their shapes of the moment and followed one another in panicked flights, seeking safe havens under distant stars. The Apostate permitted them to escape, knowing even as they renounced this world that one of their ranks would not follow them, spiteful to the very end.

Brash beyond her years, the Wanderer burned with hatred and held her ground. This battle is not over, she pledged.

But the war is, decreed the Apostate. And you have lost.