Текст книги "Sword of Damocles "

Автор книги: Geoffrey Thorne

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

  She didn’t wonder long. As soon as the ship detected their signals, the emergency protocols initialized and beamed them all back to the hold.

  Vale, Troi, Keru, and the largest Orishan she had seen yet materialized before her within seconds of her emerging from the tesseract.

Chapter Twelve

   The three of them came away from the link as if hit with a mild electric shock. The entire exchange took only a second or two but Vale gasped and stumbled back from Modan when the latter released her linking spines.

  “You just left him there!” said Vale, after regaining some composure. “Alone!”

  “It was his wish, Commander,” said Modan.

  “We’ll discuss this later, Ensign,” said Vale archly. She was only barely containing her anger over Jaza’s loss. She knew it wasn’t rational or professional but she couldn’t help it. She also knew that this wasn’t the time. “Right now you need to get down to the planet and do what you can to help Commander Ra-Havreii.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Modan. “Right away.”

  Ra-Havreii was back at work on the alien system when the three women materialized. Keru had been lucid enough to be left awake in the shuttle’s healing bed with his phaser trained on the still-subdued A’yujae’Tak. He was unhappy about being left behind, but someone had to ensure that the big insectoid stay out of trouble.

  “Status, Doctor,” said Vale when the transport effect faded. She was immediately rocked into a nearby wall by another of the ground tremors. This one was at least as violent as the first.

  “I’m having difficulty,” he said as another jolt forced him to leave off his ministrations in favor of holding on for dear life. “I believe I know what this Veil device is, but I’m having trouble with the Orishan symbols and idioms.”

  “Modan,” said Troi. “See if you can help him translate.”

  The golden woman half slid, half jumped her way to join the engineer by the control console. Once there she began to translate any Orishan symbol that she could.

  Much to Ra-Havreii’s surprise, she also began to help him manipulate the controls themselves, many of which had to be activated four or eight at a time.

  “I must say,” he said, during the lull in their activities that was forced on them by yet another temblor. “Your knowledge of esoteric computer systems is impressive. Especially for a linguist.”

  “It’s not me, Ra-Havreii,” she said, getting back to work as soon as the shaking subsided enough. “It’s Jaza.”

  “Is it now?” he said, falling back in beside her. “You will have to explain to me how that is possible, Ensign. Provided any of us survive this.”

  “What the hell is that thing?” said Vale, still very much smarting from the loss of Jaza and having nothing to do but stand and watch the others work.

  “A tremendously dangerous piece of technology,” said Ra-Havreii, not bothering to turn. His and Modan’s hands moved in a quartet of blurs over the console. “I doubt they have any idea what they’re playing with.”

  “Do you?” said Vale.

  “I-” another violent tremor shook the entire structure, forcing the Efrosian into an unnatural stammer. “I believe it’s a massive fold device. A network of them actually.”

  “So you’re, what,” said Vale, also struggling for balance, “shutting it down?”

  “No, ma’am,” said Modan through clenched teeth. The current quake was not only failing to dwindle in severity but was actually growing worse. Huge chunks of the Spire’s upper floors began to crack and fall, forcing Troi and Vale to dive for cover more than once. “We’re stabilizing the network.”

  “Stabilizing it?” said Troi, shouting to be heard over the din. “Shouldn’t you be shutting it down?”

  “No,” yelled Ra-Havreii. Then, all at once, the shaking and the noise both stopped. “Not unless we want to crack this planet into much smaller bits.”

  Vale took a moment to enjoy the quiet and the unshaking ground. She fancied she could hear a very low, very steady hum emanating from the walls around her. As they were not dead and the planet seemed to be intact, she felt it reasonable to assume that, for the moment, things were in fact stable.

  “All right,” she said. “Slowly. What is that thing, exactly, and why can’t you just turn it off?”

Chapter Thirteen

   “What do you call this again, sir?” said Dakal, more nervous now that he was actually strapped into the TOV than he had been when Roakn had suggested him and not Pel or Hsuuri for the duty.

  “Riffing, Cadet,” said the captain, standing over the Benzites as they made the final adjustment to the probe. Merlik nodded to his counterpart, who gave Riker the thumbs-up. They were ready. “It’s simple.”

   I’m glad it is to someone, thought Dakal. Because it makes nonazzing sense to me. It was strange enough having the captain in the sensor pod for more than the time of a quick inspection, but to have him not only here but actually rolling up his sleeves to pitch in with the work? Well, it was unsettling.

  “Our enemy is only a few hundred kilometers away,” said Riker as the Benzites slid the probe into the dock. “They’re safe in a vessel that is not only protected from the conditions that are hitting Titanby being partially out of phase but which is actually able to use those conditions to their benefit.”

  “Probe is in the dock and set, sir,” said the Benzites nearly in unison as they stepped away from the closing aperture.

  “We know that they use both space folds and a version of warp technology,” said the captain in a tone somewhere between that of an Academy lecturer and someone passing along private information to a close friend. “We know that they use force and plasma fields in unusual ways.”

   “TOV is active,”said the computer. “ Cadet Zurin Dakal is operating.”

  “Our phasers, on maximum setting, could probably disrupt their ability to use a good deal of their energy manipulating technology, but the conditions here won’t let us initialize,” said Riker, now beside Dakal again. The pinpoint lights in the TOV’s translucent helmet created a bright halo around his head, giving Dakal an almost cherubic aspect. “What’s the solution?”

  “Quantum torpedo, sir?” said Roakn smartly.

  “Good thought, Lieutenant,” said the captain. “But, no. The alien ship is too close to Titan. A torpedo detonation would hurt us as well.”

  “What, then, sir?” Hsuuri asked.

  “The Orishans use energy fields the way we use metal and computer code,” said Riker. “When Dakal puts that probe in the center of the same space as the out-of-phase ship and tells it to project its quantum broadcast signal back to Titan, what do you think will happen to all their interlocking fields?”

  “Disruption,” said Peya Fell as the realization hit her.

  “Well done, Ensign Fell,” said Riker. “And correct.”

  “Sir,” said Dakal, then waited for Riker to turn his way. “You appear to know all these systems and you’re checked out on the TOV.”

  “The captain has to have a working knowledge of as much of the equipment on his ship as he can,” said Riker. “Are you trying to ask something, Cadet?”

  “Only that it seems as though it should be you in the TOV harness for this,” said Dakal. “Rather than me.”

  Riker was about to tell the young cadet that they all had their duties and that his rarely included joyrides when, before he could respond, Tuvok’s voice broke in over the comm system and made the point for him.

   “Captain Riker, report to the bridge immediately,”he said.

  “What is it, Tuvok?” said Riker already on the move. “Have our Orishan friends changed the game?”

   “It’sCharon, sir.”

  “You found her?” said Riker as the turbolift doors closed on his view of the sensor pod.

   “No, sir,”said Tuvok. “She found us.”

   “This is Bellatora Fortis, captain of theU.S.S. Charon,” said the woman on the screen. She was precisely as Riker remembered, with perhaps a little more meat on her and a little more edge to her demeanor. “We are in distress and requesting immediate aid from any vessel in the vicinity.”

  Behind her Riker could see a slice of a ship’s bridge, identical to his own. Charon’s tactical officer, an Orion by the green tint of his skin, was barking at two ensigns who then scurried off to follow his orders.

  Their computer had filtered the bulk of the alarm klaxons out of the message and drastically dampened the rest, but Riker knew a Yellow Alert when he saw one.

  “Answer her,” said Riker.

  “We have been trying, Captain,” said Tuvok. The distortion in this region…”

  “Is the Orishan vessel aware of them?”

  “No, sir,” said the Vulcan. “They seem entirely focused on destroying Titan.”

   “Catastrophic shield failure in one hour, fifty-five minutes,”said the computer. Though they weren’t ignoring it exactly, the computer voice counting off the time until their demise in five-minute intervals had quickly become little more than background noise.

  “What’s Charon’s location?” said Riker.

  “Local conditions prevent our getting an exact fix,” said Tuvok. “However, she appears to be in close proximity to the space once occupied by the planet Orisha.”

  Suddenly, as they watched, the image of Charon’s bridge flickered spasmodically, cycling through the color spectrum and spitting out a burst of static over the audio channel. When the image righted itself, things had changed on the other ship.

   Charonwas at Red Alert now, with emergency warnings screaming and flashing all around and her entire bridge suffused with the same scarlet glow.

  “Tuvok,” said Riker. “What the hell just happened?”

  “Unknown, sir,” said the Vulcan. “ Charonis close to the center of the flux effect. It is likely these conditions are more pronounced there.”

  Captain Fortis, unaware that she was still broadcasting, gave precise unemotional commands to her officers, commands Riker found distressingly familiar.

   “We’ll have to eject the core manually,”she said to someone unseen. “And send casualties to the auxiliary medical bay on deck five. Those systems are still up.”

   “Brace for another wave,”said the big Orion, and before anyone could react, it hit. As the bridge crew held on for dear life, several of the visible control stations exploded or went dark.

  Captain Fortis was knocked to the floor by the body of one of her officers who had been too slow to anchor herself. Casualty and damage reports flooded in, and Fortis fielded each one with an almost Vulcanesque resolve as she climbed to her feet.

  Riker felt his respect for her increase exponentially as he watched her calmly but firmly prod her people to keep focused, to do the necessary work to get the ship to safety.

   “I don’t care if you have to blow a hole in the bulkhead and shove it through, Matis,”she said to her very distressed chief engineer. “Get that warp core off my ship before-”

  She was cut off by another flickering of the screen, another cycling through the color spectrum. Riker wasn’t sure, but he thought he could hear someone screaming under the static.

  It was horrible enough not being able to let Charonknow her sister vessel was close and could see her predicament if nothing else. Being forced to impotently sit and watch their distress was intolerable to Will Riker. His mind raced. There had to be something they could do to help.

  “Forget about talking to them,” he said, nearly coming out of his seat. “Narrow-cast Titan’s shield and code modifications directly to their main memory core.”

  “Attempting to comply, Captain,” said Tuvok. “Local flux conditions prevent-”

  “Deep water!” Lavena’s gasp cut off the rest of Tuvok’s complaint, and as the image on the screen resolved itself, the rest of the bridge crew knew why.

   Charon’s bridge was in a shambles, a destroyed mirror image of Titan’s own. The only illumination came from three monitor screens at the science and tactical stations behind the captain’s chair. The screens themselves displayed only fields of static. The dark silhouettes of the dead or comatose members of the bridge crew lay draped over consoles, slumped unnaturally in the turbolift entrance, or pinned beneath a piece of exploded equipment.

  For a moment nothing moved, and Riker began to suspect that the emergency broadcast had only been triggered by some barely active section of the ship’s dying computer system.

  Then, with an ugly, gurgling moan, Charon’s captain lurched into view, hauling herself back into her chair and fixing the viewer with her frosty blue gaze.

   “This is Captain Bellatora Fortis, of-”she stopped, the breath seemingly obstructed by something broken in her chest. “Of the Federation Starship Charon. We have encountered a-we don’t know what it is-a region of extreme temporal flux and randomized-”She coughed into her fist, and there was blood on her hand when she moved it away again. “My crew are mostly dead. Evacuation protocols were ineffective. Charon is being consumed, torn apart, by the conditions in this region. My science officer-”

  Fortis glanced off to her left at something not visible from this angle. For a moment her mask of perfect calm shattered and her terrible grief showed through.

   “Me paenitet,”she said softly. “Formidolose me paenitet.”

  In addition to everything else, the translation matrixes were obviously malfunctioning. No one on Titanneeded the help. Charonwas done. Fortis knew it and so did they.

  The image spasmed as Charonwas hit by another powerful jolt. Fortis winced, grimacing as she was forced to grip the arms of her chair to maintain her upright position.

  When the shaking subsided and she turned back to the viewer, her mask had returned. If one could ignore the blood on her face and the carnage all around her, it was easy to see the slender patrician woman taking her ease in some lecture hall or at the symphony instead of captaining the graveyard her ship had become.

   “I am using the time we have to broadcast the required warning messages to prevent this happening to another ship,”she said. “Our nearest sister vessel isTitan, captained by William Riker. I ask that any sentients who receive and understand this message communicateCharon ’s fate to him. We believe this dangerous phenomenon to be expanding. If so, the consequences for any life-forms in its path are…”She faltered again and recovered. “This was not the result of an attack or any hostile action by any species known or unknown. It is simply our fate. I am Bellatora Fortis, daughter of Atheus and Cerisan. Parata mori sum. Fortunam meam complexo.”

  There was another rainbow flash, accompanied by a short burst of static, and then the screen went black. It seemed an eternity of silence followed, during which time on Titanstood still.

   “Catastrophic shield failure in one hour, fifty minutes,”said Titan’s computer.

  “ Charonis gone, sir,” said Tuvok. “I cannot establish a sensor lock.”

  “What was that we just saw?” Bohn asked, trying to come back to the situation at hand rather than dwell on all those deaths. “Some sort of time-delay glitch in the broadcast?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Lavena slowly. “I think it was live.”

  “It was, Ensign,” said Tuvok.

  “But how can that be, sir?” said Bohn. “We came here looking for Charon, didn’t we? She only just got here.”

  “The space-time distortions have damaged normal causality in this region,” said Tuvok. “The message Captain Fortis just broadcast is the one that Titanreceived four days ago.”

   Four days, thought Riker. Have we only been at this for four days?It didn’t seem possible. Staring at the flat black panel of the main viewer, feeling his own vessel buffeted both by the ongoing chaos outside and the slowly contracting Orishan grappling field, all he could hold in his mind was that what had happened to Charonhad also happened to the Ellington. That and the people who were responsible.

  “Captain Fortis was correct, however,” said Tuvok. “This flux effect is expanding. It will grow past the boundaries of this system within three standard days.”

  “Tuvok,” said Riker after taking time to digest the full meaning of the Vulcan’s words. The particular timbre his voice had acquired mandated silence in the bridge personnel. “I want to talk to the Orishan captain.”

  “Channel open,” said Tuvok.

  “This is the captain of the Starship Titan,” said Riker, standing and facing the flickering image of the Orishan vessel that had appeared on the main screen. “We didn’t come here to fight you, but if you don’t stop your attack on my ship I will be forced to respond in kind.”

  He waited precisely ten seconds for the response he knew wouldn’t come.

   “Catastrophic shield failure in one hour, forty-five minutes,”said the computer.

  “Right,” he said. “Your choice.” He signaled for Tuvok to kill the broadcast and contacted the sensor pod.

   “Roakn here. Go ahead, sir.”

  “Tell Cadet Dakal he can launch when he’s ready.”

  “ Yes, Captain,”said Roakn.

  Riker swiveled to face Tuvok. “I’ll want to see this,” he said.

  The Vulcan, recognizing the expression on his captain’s face and its promise of a bleak future for their assailant, tapped the appropriate keys to display the probe telemetry on the main viewer.

  “If this works,” said Riker in a glacial tone that none of them had ever heard or hoped to hear again, “that thing is either going to be shunted fully into whatever dimension it’s straddling or it’s going to become solid and be subject to the same effects that have been hitting Titan. Either way, we’re finishing this.”

  “Your hypothesis is sound, Captain,” said Tuvok. “As is your attack strategy. However, it is my duty to remind you that disrupting the systems of a vessel utilizing so much unknown technology may have unforeseen consequences.”

  If the captain heard Tuvok’s warning, he gave no indication of it. “I want a boarding party ready to beam over to that ship the second it’s in phase,” he said in that same iron voice. “Then we’ll show them some consequences.”

  “I presume the captain will be leading this team?” said Tuvok.

  “You’re damned right he is,” said Riker, and in his mind, the image of his wife as she died screaming played over and over.

Chapter Fourteen

   In the centermost eave, nestled safe in webbing that linked her body with that of the great vessel around her, A’churak’zen watched the approach of the tiny metal object through the lens of her despair.

  Even as she marshaled the waves of the vessel, closing the fist she had formed around those who had caused Erykon’s wrath to fly howling and burning down on her people, she sent other waves out into the void to search for a sign that any of them might have survived.

  It was the eleventh time she had done so since Orisha had been consumed, and with each failure to find even a single breeder male or larva sac floating in the aether, her despair darkened and grew.

  She was only two things now: rage and sorrow. At first the rage had driven her and she was happy to do as it commanded. She had seen the wave, one bigger than anything anyone had ever conceived, explode out from Erykon’s Eye, consuming everything in its path.

  Its first meal was the little metal box that had served as a home for those newcomers whose blasphemous work had woken the eye from its ten-thousand-cycle slumber. It and the creatures inside had been sucked up into the vortex of wrath in less time than it took to imagine.

  That was Good and she had rejoiced in its Goodness. Erykon’s judgment was final and Just in all ways. This thought pleased her briefly and so she flexed the bit of her mind that controlled the wave around the thing called Titan, increasing the pressure on the spindly sheet of protection it had managed to erect.

  Why Erykon had spared them the worst of the destruction was a mystery, but it was not her place to question the ways of her god. Erykon’s will, Erykon’s wish, Erykon’s judgment, Erykon’s wrath all were the same and all were equally perfect and immutable.

  Though she had questioned in the past, hadn’t she? She had questioned everything early on and had been punished whenever those questions ranged too far. She had spent too much time with the Dreaming caste before being taken by the Guardians and the center of the Dreaming was the questions.

   How does this chemical reaction progress? When was thathukka vine first fertilized? Where is the heart of creation?

  So many questions, and often, even more answers, but when the question was Why?The answer was always the same.

   Why does the Daystar shine? Erykon’s will.

   Why do the Children thrive? Erykon’s will.

   Why did the lightning strike my Mater’s nest, incinerating her and all my sisters?That too was Erykon’s will, they told her. Rejoice.

  She couldn’t at first. After her family had died, she couldn’t even believe, though she knew enough to pretend. All she really had left were her questions and the punishment for asking.

  Then the Guardians took her, telling her that her mind was right for a working they had made, a great woven working that was as much alive as it was mechanical and as large as any of the Spires that the Guardians made home.

  “It needs a mind to move it, A’churak’zen,” the Guardian Mater had said. “Yours may be the one. Will you try?”

  She asked questions then, many, about the nature of their working, about their intention for it, about the particulars of mind that would be necessary to be chosen to be its mistress.

  The Guardians didn’t punish her for those, only kept silent and told her to proceed with her work. They would inform her if she was or was not the one.

  She did as she was told, running their mazes, taking their tests, eating the strange lichens they had grown exclusively for this purpose.

  They never showed her the working though. The sight of it was only for the one who would one day bond with it and bend it to its unknown purpose. But she knew where it was kept, all the Guardians did, just as they knew to stay well clear unless their Mater told them otherwise.

  But the question burned in her, What was it they had made? Why had they kept knowledge of it from the rest of the Children? How did this new working serve Erykon’s will?

  The need to know burned so hot in her she was sure its fire could be seen and smelled for hectares in every direction. She was a beacon of desire, and yet none of them, not even the Mater, could see.

  She was just a Hunter to them, a Hunter who had been raised by Dreamers, a Hunter who had enough evolutionary variance from the rank and file to warrant inclusion in their secret plan. Yet they knew nothing of her thoughts and less of the questions to which she must have answers. And, even more significant than the ignorance of her fellow Guardians, was that of Erykon.

  Why was she still alive? She didn’t believe in Erykon’s divinity anymore, and yet she had not been punished for this, the worst of all transgressions.

  All through her testing she had thought, today they would catch her. Today Erykon would know her heart and she would be punished, perhaps even killed. Every day, she won through, defeating the other test subjects, solving all the logic puzzles, passing all physical exams. Nothing ever happened.

  The Daystar rose and fell. The Children lived and ate and bred and died. She went on thinking her blasphemous thoughts absolutely unmolested.

  One day there were no other test subjects and there were no more tests. A’churak’zen had outlasted and survived them all and now stood alone in the testing chamber waiting for the Mater to speak.

  “You are the one,” she was told. “Now come and see our working.”

  They had no name for it as they had none for any mechanical working beyond a description of its function. This they only called “the vessel.” To A’churak’zen it looked like the triple-pronged head of a spear.

  It was huge, massive, its topmost portions easily approaching the roof of the cavern the Guardians had cleared for its construction. It was a little bit alive and a little bit mechanical, and even while dormant, it both radiated and absorbed waves of energy from its surroundings.

  It was made to use the waves, made to eat them and convert them into waves that could be directed, modified, used for many purposes. It would slide sideways out of the chamber, passing through the earth and crystal above, going up and up away from Orisha until it floated free in the space beyond.

  Before she could stop herself, still marveling at the thing before her, A’churak’zen asked the Mater why the vessel had been built.

  “To approach the Eye,” was the response. “We must know Erykon’s nature. We must know Erykon’s will. The Eye has slept for so long and we have built too much for it to open again and destroy us.”

  There had been pain in the bonding of her body to that of the vessel. There had been pain that she could never have imagined in a thousand cycles.

  When the pain was over, when every bit of her was somehow bonded to or wired to some bit of the vessel, when it responded to her wishes as quickly as her own now-useless limbs, when she could see with its eyes, feel with its sensing mechanisms, when all that was done, they told her to go.

  “Go to the Eye and wait,” said the Mater. “Wait for some sign.”

  “How will I know?” she said.

  “You will know.”

   How stupid they all were, she thought.

  As the vessel moved like a ghost through Orisha’s soil and then like a beam of light up through the clouds, A’churak’zen rejoiced.

  She would certainly approach the Eye. She would certainly wait for the Mater’s sign. She would certainly make contact with Erykon. But she wouldn’t ask the Mater’s questions. She wouldn’t work to preserve the Orishan civilization or even its people. She had her own questions for Erykon and her own response should the answers to those questions prove unsatisfactory.

  The vessel had weapons, terrible destructive wave-folding weapons that she had been given in order to shatter anything that might threaten either itself or the Eye.

  She would ask Erykon the question she had been asking since she had lost her family. If she didn’t like the answer, Erykon would feel the wrath of A’churak’zen.

  Only there was no sign. There was never an inkling that the Eye was even aware of her presence. She hung in her vessel, her new body really, circling the Eye like a flesh mite waiting, waiting, waiting.

  One cycle became four, four became ten, ten became a hundred, and one day she realized nearly five hundred cycles had gone by.

  There had been no word from Orisha in as many as forty. She had been forgotten as she danced in the Void with the Eye. She no longer needed food; the vessel sustained her. She no longer slept; the vessel turned off the bits of her that needed periodic rest and kept perpetually alive those that did not.

  She fell eventually into a sort of half dream in which only she and the sleeping Eye existed at all. She began to feel it was speaking to her and only to her. She began to feel that she had been wrong all those cycles ago. She began to feel that she was not a Guardian, not a Hunter, not even one of the Children anymore.

  She was something new.

  She had been sent to probe the Eye, to learn something of its wishes for her former people. She had meant to take revenge on it for allowing her family to die. She had meant, at the very least, to confront it and demand to know why Erykon had made life so cruel and unyielding.

  She had meant to do all those things, but now, after dreaming and gazing at the Eye for so long, she knew that she was meant to be its servant. Why else had Erykon stripped from her everything that could tie her to Orisha? She was to be remade, to serve and protect the Eye.

  So it had gone for cycle after cycle. Orisha thrived below and above, intangible and invisible, A’churak’zen danced before her god.

  And then the soulless beings came with their ugly little wave projectors and their hideous jabbering speech.

  She had failed to destroy them, failed to protect the Eye, which had rewarded her failure with an explosion of waves that had looked to consume everything-the soulless ones in their little metal box, the planet Orisha, and, she hoped, herself as well.

  Yet, the wave did not destroy her. It didn’t even touch her. It ripped through everything else, rolling out into the larger Void, seeking other creations on which to spill its wrath, but it had left A’churak’zen alone and filled with that same familiar question.

  Why?

  Why hadn’t she been killed with the rest? Why had the Eye not closed again? Why, why, why, why, why?

  She had almost opened her poison sacs then, seeking to follow her people into oblivion. Then the vessel informed her of another group of soulless beings, farther out toward the rim of this creation, living in another of the metal boxes.

  She had decided that this was some test, that if she could destroy this second nest of soulless intruders, Erykon might take pity on her and let her sisters and their lovely little world return. Even her Mater, dead and eaten all these long cycles ago, could come to her again.

  Only these creatures, like the first, stubbornly refused to be killed. They chattered on about names she didn’t know and concepts and places she didn’t understand, but they continued to thwart her efforts.

  Via the many inorganic senses the ship fed her mind, she was able to watch the little orb they had fired putter its way toward her.

  The soulless creatures were clearly both stubborn and stupid. She was a ghost. Whatever this thing was, she could tell it was solid matter and would pass through her body as harmlessly as any meteor.

  And then, very soon, their resistance would end. They would be crushed, and Erykon would give her her reward.

   “Probe is in position, sir,”said Dakal’s voice, still cracking a bit despite the flawless performance he’d just given.

  The modified probe now sat in the heart of the ethereal Orishan vessel, which seemed as impervious as ever.

  “Begin quantum broadcast,” said Riker.

  Pain lanced through every part of A’churak’zen as the strange little orb began to scream inside her vessel, inside her.