Текст книги "The Red King "

Автор книги: Michael Martin

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

Ships. Dozens of Romulan warbirds, as “seen” by one another’s external sensors, he supposed. All of them being driven by a single, unified intellect. An intellect whose thoughts were somehow obscured and jumbled, as though by a thick blanket of sleep.

That mind was now lashing out in extreme distress. Curiosity warred with caution, and won a narrow victory. Very carefully, Mekrikuk opened his mind, hoping to learn more about this unknown thoughtforce.

Then he screamed.

IMPERIAL WARBIRD RA’KHOI

“There,” Daehla said as she turned away from the console to address Donatra. “I’ve confirmed that both the rokhelhand its guidance program have been uploaded into the system. Both are actively engaging the alien programming that’s taken hold.”

Riker felt a surge of happy anticipation, but he carefully reined it in. Anything might still happen. “How long will it be before we know if—”

“Done, sir,” Crandall said with a grin, his gaze rising from the display on his tricorder. “Or near enough to done. The neuromagnetic signatures the entity had imposed on the network are already dwindling as the rokhelhforces them into the background and into secondary and tertiary systems.”

Studying the displays on her own instruments, Daehla nodded in agreement. “Confirmed. The alien programming is being shunted out of primary core systems.”

“Great work,” Riker said, exchanging triumphant smiles with Donatra as he reached for his combadge.

U.S.S. TITAN

Keru lay in one of the sickbay biobeds, reclining against a pile of pillows as he sipped from a glass of cool water. He was as restless as he had been at any other time in his life. Dr. Ree had kept him in sickbay for observation ever since he’d regained consciousness a couple of hours earlier. Of course, he couldn’t blame Ree for his caution; Keru’s chest remained bandaged, despite multiple surgeries and dermal regenerations, thanks to the all but mortal wounds he had sustained during Titan’s skirmishes in Romulan space.

He was grateful that Ree and Ogawa had brought him up to speed on most everything that had happened over the past several days, including the death of Chief Engineer Ledrah, the birth of the Bolajis’ child, Titan’s unexpected relocation to the Small Magellanic Cloud, and the disappearance of Commander Donatra’s hidden fleet, which had evidently been spirited away by some sort of emergent life-force.

I spend a few days on the disabled list, and the whole damn universe spins down into utter chaos,he’d thought more than once, though he knew all the while that such self-centered notions were completely preposterous.

He was also frustrated in that he had been able to learn precious little about what was going on presently. All he knew for certain was that his captain was off the ship—against Keru’s recommendation—leading a boarding party onto one of Donatra’s vessels. His captain was in danger right this minute, as was Commander Tuvok, the man who was currently filling in for Keru as Titan’s tactical officer and security chief.

And Keru knew he wouldn’t be able to do a damned thing to help either of them.

Keru hadn’t forgotten that he had been prepared to leave Tuvok behind on Romulus during the Vikr’l rescue after that operation had begun coming apart at the seams. And although he had merely been following both regulations and the mission profile that day, he still hadn’t quite been able to forgive himself.

You’d better get the captain back aboard in one piece, Mr. Tuvok,he thought. And yourself as well. Otherwise you and I are going to havewords .

A piercing shriek interrupted his reverie, causing him to send most of the contents of his glass splashing onto the bed and the deck beneath it.

Despite the pain that lanced through his chest, he swung his bare feet to the floor, discarding his suddenly emptied glass as he turned toward the source of the sound.

In the opposite corner of the sickbay lay Mekrikuk, the hulking Reman whom he’d helped rescue from Vikr’l Prison. Every muscle and tendon in the Reman’s large, chalk-white frame seemed to strain as a scream of pure fright issued from some primal place deep within him.

Keru moved unsteadily in Mekrikuk’s direction, though he saw that Ree and Ogawa were already converging on the Reman’s biobed. Mekrikuk had already stopped screaming, though his eyes remained huge and terror-stricken.

“Tell your captain he must stop what he’s doing!” Mekrikuk said in a surprisingly mellifluous tenor voice. “Now!”

“Maybe he’s hallucinating,” Ogawa said as she prepared a hypospray with a prestidigitator’s speed. “He could be having some sort of drug reaction.”

Or maybe not. Some Remans are pretty damned strong telepaths,Keru thought, stumbling slightly before righting himself against one of the biobeds. The time he’d spent on Trill, tending the telepathic symbionts who dwelled in Mak’ala’s deep, aqueous caverns, had taught him never to dismiss any being’s apparent telepathic impressions completely out of hand.

Keru watched as the head nurse slapped the hypo into the doctor’s outstretched claws. Ree quickly placed the device against Mekrikuk’s battle-scarred neck. The hypo’s contents instantly hissed home and the Reman went slackly unconscious a moment later.

Keru noticed then that Ogawa was glowering at him, though in a good-natured manner. He was, after all, Noah’s adoptive “uncle,” a member of her chosen family because of their shared history of pain and loss. “You need to get back into bed, mister. Or do I have to have you restrained?”

Keru offered her a weak smile and lofted his large hands in a gesture of surrender. Then he noticed a slight draft coming from the air circulation system, and realized only now that his sickbay gown had left his aft section entirely unshielded.

“All right, Alyssa. I’ll go quietly. But I need to call the bridge first.” And some pants might be nice, too,he thought.

Seated in the command chair on Titan’s bridge, Christine Vale watched the constellation of viewscreen blips that constituted Donatra’s runaway fleet and felt vaguely uneasy. Occasionally she glanced at the main science station, from which Jaza was conspicuously absent.

Belay that thought, Vale. The bridge is no place for infatuations,she told herself. Then she paused for an instant to consider Riker and Troi, whose relationship had gone about as far past infatuation as imaginably possible. On the other hand, I ought to be able to get away with marrying him.

Looking away from Jaza’s console, which was now occupied by Lieutenant Eviku, Vale noted that Frane had remained standing beside the turbolift. He watched the screen, as still and silent as a gargoyle. Admiral Akaar, who had come up from the main transporter room a few minutes earlier, also stood nearby, apparently keeping an eye on Frane as much as on the viewscreen. Frane, for his part, seemed to be studiously avoiding the Capellan’s piercing basilisk stare.

“Riker toTitan .”

Will Riker’s voice, though filtered through her combadge, sounded calm and businesslike, which reassured her somewhat. But onlysomewhat. Her faint sense of dread persisted.

“Vale here. Go ahead, Captain.”

“We’re making excellent progress here. We should have manual control over the entire fleet in just a few minutes. The entity inhabiting the computers knocked everyone unconscious with anesthezine gas. We’re reinitiating all environmental and life-support protocols right now, to blow every deck of every ship clear of the stuff. I’ll advise you as soon as the operation’s complete.”

The captain signed off, and Vale slumped back slightly into the chair, sighing in relief and simultaneously blowing a stray hank of her fine auburn hair away from her face.

Dakal turned from the forward ops station and fixed her with a puzzled stare. “Commander, I’m picking up some pretty strange readings.”

Vale rose and glanced at the Cardassian cadet’s console. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, until she glanced to the starboard science station, where Eviku was obviously studying the very same readings.

“This is not good, Commander,” Eviku said, the Arkenite’s seashell ears twitching on either side of his elongated head.

Titanrocked, forcing everyone on the bridge to grab at chairs, railings, or consoles until the inertial dampers compensated, leveling things out a second or so later. It felt as though the ship had been struck very hard by something large and blunt. But Vale had seen the data on Dakal’s console, so she knew that no such thing had occurred.

She also knew that what had apparently just reallyhappened might turn out to be infinitely worse.

“Yellow alert, Mr. Dakal. Raise shields.”

“Aye, sir,” Dakal said. “But I haven’t quite figured out yet what hit us.”

Vale breathed a pungent Klingon oath under her breath. “Open a channel to the capt—”

“Keru to Vale.”As Dakal complied with her order, she tapped her combadge. “Vale here. It’s good to hear your voice, Ranul, but this isn’t a good—”

“Chris, you need to know something. Our Reman guest has just given us a strange warning. He said that Captain Riker has to stop his current operation aboard that Romulan ship.”

“That sounds a bit vague,” Vale said, scowling slightly. As worried as she was, she didn’t care much for “mystical portents,” at least not outside the pages of old horror novels. “Did he offer you any specific reason?”

“Afraid not. And he’s unconscious now, so I can’t follow up. But suppose he picked up some sort of telepathic flash of something horrible happening that nobody else has noticed just yet?”

A telepathic alarm from our Red King?Vale thought, well aware that she had rarely been steered wrong by Ranul’s hunches, which he never offered lightly. And she also had to admit that Mekrikuk’s admonition completely squared with her own misgivings—and with the readings that were even now scrolling across Dakal’s and Eviku’s consoles. Not to mention whatever force had just slammed into Titan. There’s obviously something more going on here than simple senior officer jitters.

“Thanks, Ranul,” Vale said. “I’m going to check this out.”

Vale’s combadge chirped yet again, followed by the synthetic voice of Dr. Cethente. “I believe we may have a serious problem, Commander.”

“Looks that way,” Vale said. “Any ideas on explaining it?” She turned her gaze back toward an inset display on the main viewscreen’s port side, where data from the science station was scrolling upward. She glanced in Eviku’s direction and saw that the xenobiologist was looking at her expectantly, as were Frane, Akaar, Dakal, Lavena, Dr. Ra-Havreii—who had evidently stepped out of the turbolift a few moments ago—and the rest of the bridge crew.

“It appears,” said Eviku, speaking very slowly and carefully, “that space itself has begun to… bucklelocally. And the effect is accelerating.”

“Cethente?” Vale said.

“Lieutenant Eviku is correct, in my opinion.”

Vale felt her heart begin to race. Though she had never worked with Cethente prior to Titan’s maiden voyage, she was well acquainted with his reputation. His scientific analyses were only very rarely wrong, even when given off the cuff. And he doesn’t evenhave cuffs.She forced herself to breathe slowly and evenly, calming herself.

“Meaning?” Vale asked.

“Meaning that the rate at which our ‘Sleeper’is apparently rearranging space has abruptly begun to accelerate. It may increase by about an order of magnitude. Perhaps more.”

“And the cause?”

“I can’t prove it conclusively, Commander, but ithas to be related to our efforts to force the entity to relinquish its control over those Romulan ships out there. Forcing this emerging intelligence from the Romulan computer systems pushed a substantial part of it back into the very space its emergence has been affecting ever since its initial arrival here. The accelerated breakdown of space appears to be strongest in the immediate vicinity of the Romulan fleet. And the effect is spreading at many times the speed of light, propagating directly through the subspace medium.”

Swell,Vale thought. To Eviku, she said, “What’s in its immediate path?”

“Stellar cartography shows an inhabited system directly in the path of the disruptions,” Eviku said. “It’s less than two parsecs from our current position. At the rate the effect is spreading, the entire system will be devastated. By the time the effect reaches its peak—I’d give it between seven to ten standard days—it’ll be as though this whole star system never even existed.”

“That is the system of the Coreworld,” Frane said, stepping forward several paces. Akaar regarded him the way a herpetologist might study a deadly serpent. “A planet called Oghen.”

“Oghen?” Vale asked, blinking rapidly as she turned her chair so that she faced the Neyel, whose tail switched uneasily from side to side behind him.

“Oghen is home to nearly two billion sentients,” Frane said. “It’s the homeworld of the Neyel Hegemony.”

And it’s maybe a week away from being completely erased from existence,Vale thought, her heart dropping into a sudden freefall. Maybe along with every other inhabited world in Magellanic space, and perhaps even farther off than that.

And she couldn’t think of a single damned thing she could do about it. Except one.

“Dakal, get me the captain and Commander Jaza. Now.”

Chapter Thirteen

IMPERIAL WARBIRD VALDORE,STARDATE 57029.4

“We’ve recovered our fleet, Donatra, and with minimal loss of life,” Commander Suran said quietly, though an audible edge of irritation tinged his voice. His head remained bandaged, as it had been since just after the Valdore’s rather bumpy arrival in Neyel space. “The fleet is operational, fully crewed, and ready to move out.

“So why in the name of Karatek’s bones are we lingering here while space itself is disintegrating all around us?”

Donatra watched her colleague carefully, noting the vehement, almost fearful urgency in his manner. The last time the usually reserved Suran had seemed so agitated had been immediately after his discovery that the Great Bloom had swallowed their hidden fleet. And now that we’ve recovered that fleet, he wants to take no further chances.

She looked around the Valdore’s busy bridge, which had become even busier during the few siurenthat had elapsed since Donatra’s and Riker’s boarding parties had departed from the Ra’khoi.

“That’s an excellent question, Suran,” Donatra said as her eyes lit on Decurion Seketh, who stood beside one of the operations consoles. “I trust you can explain more concisely than I can, Decurion.”

The young woman looked slightly frazzled to be put on the spot in front of both of the fleet’s flag officers so soon after the mission aboard the Ra’khoi,but she quickly recovered herself. “I would advise against trying to move the fleet out of the region for at least the next half -eisae,”Seketh said.

“Why?” Suran wanted to know, scowling.

“Because of the growing spatial instabilities that have been appearing all around us during the past several dierhu,Commander.”

Suran’s scowl deepened. “So we avoid them.”

“Yes, sir. Of course. But unless we allow the computers enough time to model the phenomenon precisely, some of our ships are bound to suffer severe damage from subspace shearing effects. If we try to leave the vicinity without the ability to adjust our warp fields instantaneously to accommodate the ongoing spatial changes, we could lose singularity containment on half our ships.”

“Or maybe all of them,” Donatra said. Though she had never been one to jump at shadows, she had never fancied herself a wild-eyed optimist. Not when it came to the safety of her ships and crews.

Suran acquiesced, but still seemed impatient. “I see. Well, I don’t want us to stay here a single siurelonger than absolutely necessary.”

“I agree,” Donatra said, quietly wondering what would happen when and if she and Suran could no longer achieve a meeting of the minds with such apparent ease. We can’t exactly pull rank on each other, after all,she thought. Far easier to pull our disruptors, or our Honor Blades.

“Captain Riker is hailing us, Commander,” Seketh said, interrupting Donatra’s brown study. She wondered whether the young decurion was addressing her or Suran.

“Put him on visual,” Donatra said quietly, then faced the bridge’s central viewer while Seketh complied.

A look of intense concern radiating from his blue eyes, Riker started in without preamble. “Commander, we have to discuss what’s begun happening to the space around our ships.”

In spite of herself, Donatra felt a surge of hope bloom within her. “Have you discovered why the breakdown of local space has begun accelerating?” Despite her hopes, she feared she already knew the answer.

Riker nodded, his expression remaining grave. “My people are of the opinion thatwe’re responsible. My crew and yours.”

“How?” she asked quietly, already all but certain that her question was unnecessary.

“When we forced the growing protouniverse’s emerging intelligence out of your fleet’s computer network, it had to go somewhere else. So once it was effectively locked out of your ships, it began ‘reordering’ local space at an even faster rate than before.”

“In other words, this ‘Sleeper’ deity the natives worship is awakening even faster than your briefing data had indicated.”

“That’s one way of looking at it. But that’s not all. The accelerated spatial breakdown will utterly wipe out the central homeworld of the Neyel people within ten Earth days.Titan and your fleet can get there within about two days, though, to assist with their planetary evacuation—”

“You can’t be serious!” Suran said, almost bellowing.

Riker’s eyes flashed like twin glaciers beneath a sunrise. “I’mdeadly serious, Commander. We’re directly responsible for what’s happening now. Your people, as well as ours.”

“Perhaps. But what can we hope to accomplish other than throwing all of ourlives away—along with this doomed planet?”

“I don’t intend to turn my back on people thatour actions placed in danger,”Riker said, beginning to reveal an anger that Donatra didn’t doubt could easily match that of Suran.

Still, she had to favor Suran’s hard pragmatism over Riker’s softer optimism. “How many live on the Neyel homeworld, Captain?” Donatra asked.

“About two billion.”

Her eyes grew wide. “Two billion?”

Riker soldiered on as though he hadn’t noticed her incredulous reaction. “And our Neyel guest tells us that their spacefaring capabilities have diminished quite a bit over the past several decades, as they’ve slowly learned to put aside the worst of their imperial ambitions.”

Donatra shook her head in disbelief. The Federation peacemaker, this Burgess she had read about, had evidently weakened these once-puissant Neyel to the point of utter helplessness. And Federation idealism seemed to have given Riker delusions of omnipotence.

“Suran is right, Captain,” she said. “We couldn’t hope to save more than a tiny fraction of the Neyel population anyway, even if we were to use every ship in my…” She paused to glance at Suran before amending her declaration. “…in our fleet for the purpose.”

“I know that Romulan military officers are fond of paying tribute to the idea of honor by displaying ceremonial swords,”Riker said. “I hope you’re not telling me those Honor Blades of yours are entirely for show.”

As Riker’s insult sank in, Donatra’s upper lip trembled in an involuntary display of rage. The scars that laced her side became livid, singing a silent aria of old pain and anger. “Take care with your words, Captain. I respect you. But there are limits even to that.”

But Riker wasn’t deterred in the least. “Is it honorable to simplyabandon an entire world that you’ve helped place in jeopardy?”

“Of course not, Riker. But do you seriously expect to save billions of people?”

“Truthfully, I don’t knowwhat I expect, Commander. But I don’t expect to sit back and do nothing. Not when I’m partially responsible for what’s happening.”

“This is absurd,” Suran said. “As soon as our own crews deem it safe, we’re taking our fleet back to the Great Bloom, which we will then use to return to Romulan space as quickly as possible—before this entire sector truly iserased from existence.”

“We’ll still have time enough to do that,”Riker said, his tone now almost pleading rather than accusing. “After we’ve rescued as many Neyel as we can.”

“Perhaps,” Donatra said, shaking her head yet again. “But perhaps not. The evacuation you propose could easily take more time than we have left to us. And if this entire region of space completely ‘reboots’ itself before we re-enter the Bloom, the entire endeavor will have been in vain. Titan,the Valdore,and the rest of the fleet will all be wiped from existence.”

“I know it’s risky. But I’m prepared to take the risk to correct our error. Alone, if necessary.”

Despite her lingering anger over his harangue, Donatra couldn’t help but admire this human’s dogged courage. For a fleeting moment, it shamed her.

“Of courseyou’re willing to risk everything on behalf of these people, Captain,” Suran said. “They’re members of your own species, after all. Despite outward appearances, you have much in common with them.”

Riker’s azure eyes blazed. “As doyou , Suran.”

“Start making sense, human,” Suran said, mirroring Donatra’s own confusion.

“Yes, the Neyelare an offshoot of my own species. Just as Romulans are descended from the Vulcan people.”

“So?” Suran said.

“So Vulcan and the rest of the Federation very recently averted what could have been a terrible bloodletting on your homeworld. I’m merely asking you to return the favor—by assisting people who are probably no less vulnerable than your ancestors who made that first crossing from Vulcan to Romulus.”

Donatra thought of the ancient blood relationship between Vulcan and Romulan, and between human and Neyel. And she considered the wide panoply of other, nonhuman species that also served aboard Titan.As well as Riker’s apparently perfect sense of assurance that all of those variegated nonhuman/non-Neyel personnel would do whatever was required to save even a relative handful of entirely unrelated strangers from certain death.

Shame returned then, seizing her heart in an unyielding grip. Riker, after all, as Captain Picard’s first officer during the Shinzon affair, had all but become one of her comrades-in-arms. She couldn’t deny that the crews of the Valdoreand the Enterpriseboth owed one another their lives. And Riker had just helped her regain control of an enormously important military asset—her fleet.

But she and Suran both had a responsibility to safeguard that fleet, and the thousands of Romulan military personnel it carried.

She saw that her duty was clear. And hated herself, and her ingrained priorities.

“I’m sorry, Captain,” she said. “I must decline.”

U.S.S. TITAN

Flanked by Deanna Troi and Christine Vale, Riker slumped backward into his command chair a split-second after the alien starfield of Neyel space replaced the images of Donatra and Suran.

Seated at his right, Vale issued a weary-sounding sigh. “That’s it, then. We’re on our own.”

“Looks that way,” Riker said.

“Titanis going to assist at Oghen, with or without the Romulans,” Deanna said. She wasn’t asking a question.

Riker nodded to her. “Seems to me we don’t have any other legitimate option. Even if the ship is placed at risk.”

“It would be nice to have the official sanction of the Neyel government, though,” Vale said.

“I’m still working on that,” Deanna said. “The fact that the Neyel civil and military authorities seem to be too busy with crisis management to even talk to us argues that we ought to help them, with or without permission.”

“I just wonder how the crew will take this,” Vale said.

Deanna tipped her head, considering Vale’s question. “They’re a good crew. They’ll adapt.” Her dark eyes locked with Riker’s, and she offered him a gentle smile. “They’ll be frightened, of course. But they have faith in you, Will. They’ll follow wherever you lead.”

No pressure,Riker thought.

He turned his seat until he faced the aft portion of the bridge. Akaar and Frane regarded him from the railed upper section, where they loomed over him like monuments.

“You’ve both been fairly quiet since I came back aboard,” Riker said.

“If you were expecting me to second-guess you, Captain, I fear I must disappoint you,” Akaar said. “The risks are yours to take.”

“Your life will be at risk as well, Admiral,” Riker said. “Along with mine and everybody else aboard Titan.”

Akaar’s shoulders rotated in a slow shrug. His dark eyes twinkled beneath his pale, lined brow. “All of our lives would be at risk, even if we were to attempt to recross the anomaly and return home right now. I was born amid risk, Captain. As one of my namesakes once said, ‘risk is our business.’ ”

Riker’s eyes lit next upon the taciturn Neyel. “And you, Mr. Frane?”

Frane’s arms were folded, drawing the sleeves of his robe up so that the bracelet he had earlier seemed so reticent about displaying was clearly visible. His leathery face assayed a very slight smile. “I wish danger upon no one, Captain. But if you expect me to object to anyone’s effort to save my birthworld, I’m afraid I must disappoint you.”

“I was starting to think you really were rooting for the Sleeper,” Riker said.

The Neyel tipped his head inquisitively. “ ‘Rooting’?”

“Hoping that the Sleeper would wake up and erase your people from the universe.”

Frane nodded. “So I was. Once, at any rate, when I had less hope than I do now. Perhaps I misjudged myself somewhat. Just as I misjudged you as a slaver.”

Riker replied with a narrow smile of his own. Here was a young man whose cultural alienation and nihilism had led him to implore his adopted deity to punish his own people with nonexistence. Now that actual destruction—whether from divine retribution or cosmic happenstance—was en route, Frane had evidently had a change of heart. Not only that, he felt he had a reason for hope; Riker could only hope that it wasn’t a sadly misguided hope.

It occurred to Riker that Frane’s transformation had to bode well for any effort at human-Neyel rapprochement. Assuming that the Neyel people somehow manage to survive this,he thought as he turned back to face the main viewscreen.

“For what it’s worth,” Deanna said, “Commander Donatra is highly conflicted about having abandoned us.”

Riker scowled. “Not conflicted enough.” He leaned forward toward the ops console, behind which Cadet Dakal was seated. “Are the sensor nets fully integrated with Cethente’s spatial breakdown models?”

“Yes, sir,” Dakal said. “We’re only one ship, and we’re equipped with a more refined sensor network than the Romulans have. I’d expect their fleet to take a bit longer than we did to figure out how to navigate the local spatial instabilities safely.”

So they can’t just bolt straight back for the anomaly and a quick ticket home, at least not right away,Riker thought. The notion provided cold comfort.

He turned toward the flight control console, which Ensign Lavena was studying intently, her hydration suit gurgling slightly as she moved her sheathed hands to work the controls.

“Best speed to Oghen, Ensign,” Riker said to the Pacifican conn officer. Then he turned back toward Dakal. “And keep trying to raise the civil authorities on Oghen via subspace radio. I want to make sure they fully understand what’s coming their way.”

“Aye, sir,” the Cardassian said as he set to work.

I suppose we’ll have to figure out how the hell we’re going to save a whole planet on the way there.