Текст книги "The Red King "

Автор книги: Michael Martin

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

Chapter Fourteen

IMPERIAL WARBIRD VALDORE,STARDATE 57031.4

S oon it will be time,Donatra told herself yet again.

Seated at the forward operations console, Centurion Liravek studied a set of readouts, then rose and faced Donatra with a perfect salute, the inside of his right fist touching his sternum directly between the lungs. “Sensors and warp-field governance rokhelhuare coordinated fleetwide, Commander Donatra. All units report they are presently in readiness to move out.”

“Outstanding,” Donatra said, her voice steady though she was beside herself with unease. She watched impassively as Liravek returned to his seat and resumed working his console.

Standing beside the bridge’s centrally located command chair, Donatra turned toward Suran, who stood a short distance away, eyeing the starfield on the viewscreen with evident impatience. Intermittent flashes of deep, bloody green and furious orange flared across portions of the interstellar blackness, each small conflagration revealing nearby loci of intense spatial disruption caused by the protouniverse whose influence the boarding parties had just chased from the fleet’s computer network. Our own handiwork,she thought grimly, considering once again how she and Riker had unwittingly accelerated the process that threatened the lives of so many, across such an enormous volume of space.

And we prepare to flee it, along with the craven Klingons.There was no honor to be found in this. None at all.

A small green light on the arm of Donatra’s command chair began flashing silently. She stepped toward the chair and toggled it off. Thank you, Dr. Venora,she thought, satisfied that no one else had noticed.

“Then let’s get these ships underway,” Suran told the centurion. “The Empire needs the fleet’s protection, especially now that the Klingons have a beachhead on the Two Worlds. We can’t afford to wait around here any longer than we have to.”

“You’re right, Suran. We must act,” Donatra said, her eyes lingering on the bandages that still swathed Suran’s head.

Suran noticed her stare and scowled. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Are you sure you’re feeling well, Suran?”

Suran’s scowled deepened. “I’m fine.”

Donatra assayed her most serious I’m-terribly-concerned-about-youexpression. “You’ve gone as pale as a Reman, Commander.”

“Nonsense.”

“Dr. Venora wasn’t very happy when you checked yourself out of the infirmary.”

“Venora’s neververy happy,” Suran said with a grim laugh.

Donatra nodded toward the centurion. “Take over up here, Liravek. Get the fleet under way.”

Liravek rose again from his seat and again saluted smartly, though his countenance betrayed a look of growing confusion. Was he becoming suspicious? “At once, Commander Donatra.”

She turned and strode toward the lift doors. “I need to speak with you, Suran. Alone.”

Stepping into the lift, Donatra saw the thunderclouds gathering behind her colleague’s bandaged brow. He stepped into the lift with her.

“Infirmary,” she said once the doors had closed.

“I haven’t the time for this,” he said. Turning his face toward the ceiling, he said, “Computer, halt lift.”

But the lift continued. “I have overridden the lift’s voice-command protocols, Suran.”

“Why?” Suran asked, the suspicion in his voice now plainly evident. “Do you believe me somehow unfit for duty, Donatra?”

“That depends upon what you decide to do next. How long has it been since you last visited Dr. Venora?”

“You know I’ve been a bit busy since my release from the infirmary, Donatra.”

“You released yourself,”Donatra reminded him yet again. “Now that we have recovered the fleet and have gotten it under way, I insist that you make some time to visit the good doctor. Now.”

“Iwill decide if and when I visit the infirmary, Commander.”

Donatra reached quietly into her tunic pouch. She sighed, truly regretting what she had to do next. “I’m afraid I must insist.”

Suran froze as his eyes lit on the small disruptor unit in her right hand, which she leveled straight at his lungs. At that moment, he truly did look as pale as any Reman.

“This is tantamount to mutiny, Donatra!”

She made a brushing-away gesture with her left hand. “Nonsense. Unless you mean to imply that I’m your subordinate. We are equals in rank, Commander.”

Suran seemed to ignore the point. “You can’t fire that without setting off every security alarm on the ship.” But he remained still, clearly not willing to test his assertion. After all, if she had tampered with the lift command protocols, how could he count on the security alarms?

Donatra allowed her left hand to fall to her side, where it moved toward a second pocket on her tunic.

The lift settled to a stop, and the doors whisked open, revealing Dr. Venora standing near the threshold. No one else was visible in the corridor beyond, which led directly to the infirmary entrance. That, Donatra knew, was a detail that Venora had arranged.

“So you’re in on this, too, Doctor,” Suran said, turning toward the Valdore’s chief medical officer. He moved into a defensive crouch, as though daring Venora to attack him.

Never, ever turn your back on me, Suran,Donatra thought, removing the hypo from her left tunic pocket. Striking with the speed of a jhimnadder, she emptied its contents into Suran’s neck.

Suran turned toward her, eyes blazing, before sagging insensate toward the deck. Donatra caught his limp form on its way down, hoisting him up and draping one flaccid arm across her back. Venora picked up and pocketed Donatra’s hypo and disruptor, then assisted Donatra and Suran out of the lift, down the empty corridor, and into the infirmary, where several officers, all injured during the Valdore’s passage through the Great Bloom, still lay recuperating. Moments later the unconscious Suran lay safely on one of the infirmary beds, Venora standing over him and verifying that his vital signs were strong and stable. Two nearby patients, a man and a woman—Donatra had noticed that both wore the insignia of enlisted uhlans—watched in silent surprise.

“Commander Suran’s injuries were evidently worse than we had believed,” Donatra said before crossing to a wall-mounted comm unit.

She jabbed the activation button with her thumb. “Bridge, this is Commander Donatra.”

“Acknowledged, Commander,”came Liravek’s crisp response.

“Patch me into the fleet, Centurion. There’s been a change of plans.”

U.S.S. TITAN

“I’ve finally got one of Oghen’s senior civil authorities on subspace channels, Captain,” announced Lieutenant Rager, who sounded both relieved and tired.

Troi felt the same way. It had taken hours to reach anyone with any apparent decision-making authority in the Neyel Hegemony’s power structure, such was the chaos that seemed already to be taking hold on the central Neyel world. From the disjointed gabble of communications Titanhad already intercepted, the planet seemed to be in the grip of a steadily growing global natural disaster.

“On the screen, Lieutenant,” Vale said from the seat at Will’s right.

A hard-looking gray Neyel with dark, close-cropped hair filled most of the screen a moment later. Troi didn’t realize it was a female Neyel until she began to speak. “I am Defense Subdrech’tor Hiam, outworlder.”

Will rose, standing in front of his command chair as a sign of respect. “I am Captain William T. Riker of the Federation Starship Titan.”

“I have received your earlier transmissions, Captain.”

“Then you understand the seriousness of the danger you face.”

The Neyel official neatly sidestepped the question. “Explain your presence in our space. Are you responsible for what is happening on the Coreworld?”

“No, we are not, Subdrech’tor,” Will said, though his emotional aura gave the lie to his words. For a variety of reasons, Will evidently felt very much responsible for the rift and what it threatened to do to this reason of space. After all, the rift might never have opened in the first place but for the battle two months ago between Shinzon and the crew of the Enterprise.

Hiam’s shuttered eyes widened in apparent recognition. “ ‘Federation.’ First one of your representatives comes among us bearing sweet words. Then you avenge her death by visiting destruction upon us.”

This woman is clearly not one of her people’s pro-Burgess progressive thinkers,Troi thought sadly.

“You must evacuate your world’s people, Subdrech’tor. We are here to help you.”

“Help us? The Neyel people have always been more than capable of helping themselves.”

However true this assertion might have been in the past, Troi knew that the subdrech’tor couldn’t back it up now. The disasters being caused by the subspace distortions were evidently causing so much havoc that the Neyel military hadn’t been able to send even a single ship to challenge Titanas she continued to make best speed for Oghen.

“Subdrech’tor, whatever anomalies are plaguing your world right now will only intensify over the coming days. My staff believes you will have to take steps to evacuate your homeworld. We offer you whatever assistance we can provide.”

Hiam paused, apparently thinking the matter through. She was too far away, of course, for Troi to get a true empathic “read” on her. Nevertheless, it wasn’t hard to conclude that Hiam was a canny tactician with a flexible outlook; whether her primary concern was saving as many lives as possible, or how heroic she might make herself appear after the crisis, was an open question.

In the end, it didn’t really matter. “All right, Captain Riker. Bring your ship to Oghen, for whatever good it will do. You can hardly make matters worse than they already are.”And with that, she signed off, her stern visage replaced by the star-speckled vista of the Small Magellanic Cloud.

Will sat back in his chair, his mind a study in stress and tension, as were his shoulders.

Vale had noticed this as well. “Captain, you look like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders right now,” she said.

He offered up a wan smile. “That’s because I do, Chris.”

“We’re still a few hours away from Oghen, Will,” said Troi. “I recommend you use them to relax a little bit.” We need you sharp,Imzadi. Not tired and distracted.

At first, he stared back at Troi as though she had just said something unutterably ridiculous. Then his expression softened as he acknowledged the wisdom of the suggestion.

Will rose from the center seat and nodded to Vale. “Take over for me up here, Commander. I’ll be down in the mess if anyone needs me,” he said, and then headed for the turbolift.

“So when was the last time you returned to Oghen?” Riker asked as his adversary studied the chessboard between them. As usual, Frane had selected the red pieces, though Riker wasn’t certain if this signified anything meaningful.

The Neyel raised his dark eyes from the farrago of red and white chess pieces arrayed before him, and stared into the middle distance of the sparsely populated mess hall as he appeared to consider Riker’s question with great care.

“Five or six oghencycles,” Frane said at length. “Years, in your Federation parlance. It was the last time I saw my father. Before his ship picked me up near the Riftmouth, that is, when the Romulans came…” He trailed off.

Riker nodded, beginning to understand Frane’s ambivalence about the world of his birth. “Your friends in the Seekers After Penance must have been keeping you pretty busy during that time.”

He glanced briefly toward one of the room’s far corners, where the four other individuals who had shared Frane’s escape pod—including a young Neyel woman and a member of a local species whose multijointed body parts possessed the remarkable ability to separate and operate independently—were seated. Ever since coming aboard, the other members of Frane’s Sleeper-worshipping sect had largely kept to themselves, evidently as suspicious of Titan’s crew as they had been of the authorities from the Neyel Hegemony. Their initial encounter with Dr. Ree, who had cursorily examined them some two days earlier in sickbay, clearly had done nothing to ease their anxiety. They tended to venture into the mess only during off-peak times such as this; only a handful of Starfleet personnel were present, since the alpha-shift lunchtime rush wasn’t due for another half hour or so.

At the moment, the quartet was taking a meal with varying degrees of evident nervousness, with the cattle-like pair of aboriginal Oghen appearing far more fearful than the rest of the group. Only the multipartite creature, evidently known as a Sturr, seemed more or less preoccupied with the meal before it, but that may have been either because he or she was utterly nonhumanoid, or because approximately half of the creature was seated and eating while the balance of its body parts had crawled over to the buffet table to obtain more food and drink. Although the Pandronians back in the Alpha Quadrant had evolved similar adaptations, Riker decided that the Sturr was easily the most fascinating sentient he had encountered in the past several years; he had to force himself not to stare, goggle-eyed.

The lone Neyel female, whom Frane had introduced earlier as Nozomi, sat vigil over a largely uneaten green salad, watching Riker and Frane with dark eyes that brimmed over with fear and suspicion. Riker couldn’t really blame her for her apprehension; she and her fellows had been through a lot these past few days, and the Neyel military—to say nothing of the Romulans—had obviously given them all good reason to consider armed authority figures guilty until proven innocent.

“The sect devotes a great deal of its time and energy to study and meditation,” Frane said in answer to Riker’s observation, then deftly maneuvered his knight from a trap that Riker had assumed the younger man had overlooked. The move reminded Riker that it would be a mistake to underestimate Frane; despite his relative youth, the young Neyel had clearly survived a great deal of adversity and knew how to think on his feet.

“Your sect also seems to have put a great deal of its time and energy into entreating your deity to wipe out your people,” Riker said. “Not to mention a lot of innocent bystanders.”

Once again worrying the bracelet on his wrist, Frane lapsed into what seemed to Riker an almost sullen silence. Riker felt a deep sense of disappointment, which only increased by the hour; during the nearly two days since Titanhad set out for the beleaguered Neyel homeworld—her crew taking care all the while to avoid potentially lethal interactions between the starship’s warp field and the Sleeper’s increasingly frequent stirrings—Frane had once again become extraordinarily withdrawn. He continued to refuse Deanna’s repeated requests that he sit for a counseling session, and he now seemed to endure even Riker’s company only reluctantly.

And yet he finally started rooting for his homeworld’s survival just the day before yesterday,Riker thought. After years of literally praying for its destruction at the hands of a native Magellanic god.

As among humans, old habits evidently died hard among the Neyel. Even, Riker realized now, among some of the younger ones.

Frane finally deigned to break the mess hall’s deafening silence. “We sought only atonement,Captain. The atonement of the Neyel people for being slavers and heirs to slavers, and atonement for the indigenous races who allowed themselves to have been brought to such penury for so many generations.”

“Seems like an overly harsh outlook to me,” Riker said, using one of his rooks to seize one of Frane’s bishops. “Does it leave any room for forgiveness?”

Frane shrugged. “Ask the Sleeper after He awakens,” he said with audible irony, which he underscored by castling, thereby moving the red king to a place of relative safety.

Riker scanned the board again, hoping his next move would present itself in short order. He was disappointed. “Your Sleeper doesn’t seem like the forgiving sort.”

“The Neyel know the universe is not a forgiving place, Captain.”

Riker considered the plight of the Neyel Coreworld of Oghen, and was forced to agree. He moved his rook to 6g, only two spaces from Frane’s king, which had eluded him thus far.

Gotcha.“Nor is the chessboard, Mr. Frane. Check.”

Frane wasted no time taking out Riker’s rook with a bishop that seemed to have materialized from out of nowhere. “You’re right, Captain. I’ll have youin check in two more moves.”

Riker’s combadge chirped. “Vale to Captain Riker,”it said, relaying the rich, mid-register tones of Titan’s executive officer.

Riker tapped the badge. “Go ahead, Christine.”

“We’re about five minutes from clearing the Oghen system’s Oort cloud, sir.”

“Any hails or challenges?”

“No, sir. The Neyel military evidently still have their hands full dealing with trouble on the homeworld. Long-range sensors are picking up multiple spatial disruptions and warp signatures in the inner system. As well as a number of antimatter detonations.”

The Neyel ships are suffering warp core breaches,Riker thought, his belly quickening with horror. My God, how much worse will this get?

Two moves later, Riker was indeed in check. He glanced back toward Nozomi, whose fearful stare silently accused him. He couldn’t help but wonder how many of those doomed, vaporized ships had already been laden with Neyel and aboriginal Magellanic refugees, panicked men, women, and children seeking only to escape the devastation being brought their way by the progressive awakening of the Sleeper….

“Sir?”Vale said. Riker turned away from Nozomi. He noticed that Frane, too, was staring at him.

Chess really isn’t my game,Riker thought as he tipped over his king, resigning from the match. Then he stood. “I’m coming up to the bridge now. Riker out.”

He excused himself, then walked past the Seekers After Penance and into the corridor. Moments later, the turbolift doors whisked open and admitted him. After he entered and turned back to face the corridor, he saw that he wasn’t alone.

Frane had followed him, his bare, opposable-thumbed feet incongruously quiet against the deck.

Riker grinned at the impassive Neyel. “You’re welcome to come along, Mr. Frane.” As the door closed and the turbolift bore them both upward toward the bridge, Riker hoped that Frane’s presence meant that he was once again pulling for his people rather than for an ancient, unforgiving deity.

Nearly twelve hundred kilometers above the surface of Oghen, Titancrossed the terminator into the harsh glare of the system’s primary, a yellow-white F-type star.

“No response from Subdrech’tor Hiam,” said Lieutenant Rager from the aft ops station. “Or anybody else in authority, for that matter.”

“No wonder they haven’t sent any ships to harass us,” Riker said as the Neyel Coreworld displayed its many scars, most of which were apparently of very recent origin. The land masses on the planet’s night side had been dominated by countless fires as panic spread and the cities emptied. Columns of smoke rose like soiled pillars in the spreading daylight, reminding Riker of photographs he had seen of Earth’s Third World War.

Working at the aft tactical station, Tuvok pulled up enhanced images of the planet’s surface, displaying them as insets in the viewscreen’s corners, superimposing them over the view of the planet as seen from orbit. The Vulcan’s efforts yielded a dispiriting pageant of burning cities, panicked, fleeing crowds that looked like swarms of soldier ants, massive vehicular traffic jams, funnel clouds, floods and other extreme weather phenomena, and hasty spacecraft launches—many of which ended quickly in horrific, explosive crashes.

But the strangest sights were the intermittent, multicolored flashes, the angry reds and bilious greens of energy discharges released by the relentless unraveling of ever larger volumes of local space. The effects would vanish as the surrounding space rushed in to fill the spatial voids, like a tear in a curtain being obscured temporarily by pleats wafted in a breeze. Some of these explosions appeared to originate in volumes of space ranging from the size of a human fist to a large house; they were all violent, some of them occurring in the atmosphere, and some in space hundreds of kilometers above Oghen. A new one would blossom at random every few seconds, and the frequency of the energy discharges was slowly but surely increasing. If the latest models created by Titan’s science experts proved to be accurate—and Riker had no reason to doubt that they were—then those conflagrations would become a systemwide inferno that would burn itself out within two days’ time, but not before replacing more than a cubic parsec of space with an expanding, apparently sentience-bearing protouniverse.

Once again, Riker wrestled with the knowledge that his actions—as well as Donatra’s—might have greatly accelerated this growing catastrophe.

Titanrocked yet again beneath his boots. Grabbing the arms of his chair, Riker glanced to his left at Deanna, who seemed to be doing her best to appear composed. But he wasn’t fooled in the least. He quietly reached toward her and took her hand, which she squeezed hard.

“Try to keep her steady, Ensign Lavena,” said Vale, who was seated on Riker’s other side. She was leaning forward in her chair, her wiry body fairly vibrating with tension.

“Sorry, Commander,” Lavena said, scowling down at the conn panel before her. “But some of the waves of spatial distortion are taking us by surprise. The sensors are good, but they’re not perfect.”

“The world ends,” intoned a voice directly behind Riker. He turned to face Frane, who stood behind the bridge’s upper railing, his eyes fixed on the main viewscreen. Akaar and Shelley Hutchinson from security stood nearby, flanking him, though both were as intent as Frane was on the hellish vista unfolding down on Oghen. “Mechulak City. Founder’s Landing. The Great Hall of Oghen. All gone.”

Riker released Deanna’s hand, rose from his chair, and approached the young Neyel. For his sake, and for the sake of everyone else on Titan’s bridge, he tried to impart confidence to his voice. “We’re going to do everything we possibly can to save your people, Frane.”

Frane responded with a wan smile that Riker could only regard as the equivalent of a polite pat on the head. He’s right not to believe me,Riker thought, growing more and more glum by the second. Hell, I’m not sureI believe me. What the hell did I think I was going to accomplish here, anyway?

Frane looked down, apparently studying his large, gray hands. Then Riker realized that the Neyel was actually looking at the bracelet on his right wrist.

“It belonged to my father,” Frane said, raising his gray wrist so that Riker could clearly see the intricate weave of fabric, precious stones, beads, shells, and other less clearly identifiable objects. “And before that it belonged to his mother. Handed down through nine generations of Firstborn after leaving the hand of the revered Aidan Burgess herself.”

Riker’s eyes widened involuntarily. He gestured toward the bracelet, taking care not to touch it, since Frane had always seemed so disinclined even to show it; now the reason for the Neyel’s caution was becoming apparent.

“This used to belong to Ambassador Burgess?”

Frane nodded. “Ever since Aidan Burgess first gave it to Gran Vil’ja, each generation has added something new to it. A story, represented by new stones, or by new weaves of titanium thread. I had expected to bring it home someday. But I never dreamed that it would outlive that home.”

Glancing at Deanna, Riker saw that she was struggling not to weep as she regarded the increasingly despondent young Neyel. Frane seemed almost to deflate before his eyes, the hope the younger man had displayed earlier now fleeing in a great rush, like air escaping from a torn pressure suit.

Feeling fairly helpless himself, Riker resumed concentrating on the viewscreen and the carnage it revealed. The largest of Oghen’s several ancient, cratered moons, visible only as a faint and distant crescent thanks to the relative position of the sun, was beginning to drop below the horizon. Another rocky satellite, evidently much smaller and closer, rose nearby in an eccentric, retrograde orbit, white sunlight gleaming off the limb of its irregularly cylindrical shape.

“The most we can hope to do here is to beam a few hundred people up from the surface more or less at random,” Vale said. Riker saw only then that enormous tears stood in her eyes, though they seemed as motionless as boulders poised at a precipice. “Maybe we can save a couple of thousand, tops.”

Riker nodded, then returned his gaze to Oghen’s oddly shaped satellite as it continued to rise above the horizon. “If that’s really all we can do, then that’s what we’ll do. It’s better than nothing.”

“We are assuming,” Tuvok said, “that the spatial effects we are currently dodging will let us operate the transporters safely, and sufficiently often.”

Lieutenant Eviku looked up from the main science console. “The transporters should be fine. At least for the next few hours. But after that…” He trailed off meaningfully.

“But whichpeople do we rescue?” Deanna said, gazing forward. Her large, dark eyes appeared lost in the terror that was gripping the planet.

“I suppose it’s going to be the way Christine described it,” Riker said. “We grab as many Neyel as we can at random. Then we return to the spatial rift and try to get back home. Or at least somewhere clear of this Red King effect.”

Riker fervently hoped that someplacewould be clear of the phenomenon. What if it just continued to expand?

“But we’re not just talking about the Neyel here, Will. According to Excelsior’s records, there ought to be at least small populations of native species on this planet as well. What about them?”

Riker rubbed his brow and scrunched his eyes shut. He could feel a truly brutal headache coming on. Opening his eyes, he turned toward Eviku. “Scan indiscriminately with regard to species. Coordinate with Lieutenant Radowski and begin transporting as soon as you and the security and medical teams are ready. Mr. Tuvok, Mr. Vale, please see to all the security arrangements, and alert Dr. Ree of incoming injured.”

Tuvok and Vale chorused their acknowledgments while Eviku immediately got busy at his console.

“The refugees are going to be very distraught, Will. They’ll need my help as well,” Deanna said, her dark eyes wide, her tone urgent. It occurred to him that the fear radiating from the planet must have been close to crippling. She soldiered on anyway.

Riker nodded and Troi rose, striding toward the turbolift, which Vale and Tuvok had already reached.

The doors opened, and Jaza stepped out onto the bridge, followed by Ensign Norellis and Dr. Cethente. The Syrath astrophysicist’s four baroquely jointed legs moved his tapered, tentacled, dome-headed body forward with surprising speed and grace.

“We may have finally found a workable solution to our Red King problem, Captain,” Jaza said, sounding almost ebullient as he handed a padd over the railing down to Riker. “It will involve taking action in the immediate vicinity of the spatial rift. And it will have to be done soon.”

Riker felt real delight at the genuine hope he perceived in the voice and manner of the science specialists. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help but feel cautious just now about entire concept of hope. But as he glanced at the padd’s table of contents hope began to seize him in spite of himself.

And he couldn’t ignore the most immediate problem that faced Titanand her crew. “We’re nearly two days away from the Red King’s entry point at maximum warp, Mr. Jaza. Even if we were to head back there this minute—and that’s assuming your plan will work—the people stuck on Oghen now wouldn’t stand a chance of survival. Am I right?”

Jaza nodded, grim reality dialing down his earlier enthusiasm quite a bit. Norellis looked subdued as well.

“I agree,”Cethente said, in a voice like rows of tiny crystalline bells. “Our first priority remains rescuing as many people as possible from that planet below.”

Once again, Riker’s eyes drifted to the viewscreen. The irregularly shaped, shadow-cloaked satellite continued to grow larger.

And more familiar.

Turning toward Frane, Riker pointed at the approaching chunk of rock and nickel-iron. “Do you recognize that object, Mr. Frane?”

Still staring at the apocalypse, the Neyel seemed to have drifted into an almost catatonic state. He roused himself a moment later, only after Riker had repeated his name.

“That is Holy Vangar, of course,” Frane said in a near whisper. “The legacy of the Oh-Neyel People to all the Neyel who came after them.”

Though the object in question remained mostly in darkness, Riker saw a look of recognition cross Akaar’s features at that moment. Tuvok’s eyebrows lofted higher than Riker had ever seen them go.

“Vanguard,” both men said in perfect synchrony.

Of course,Riker thought. They were both aboardExcelsior when Vanguard was found.

He recalled from Excelsior’s reports that the lost O’Neill colony known as Vanguard—a self-contained terrestrial environment fashioned from a hollowed-out asteroid during the tumultuous first half of the twenty-first century—had been left parked in orbit about Oghen by the human ancestors of the Neyel. It was high enough so that its orbit had not yet been altered significantly by the long-term effects of upper atmospheric drag.

“Eviku. Tuvok. Scan that satellite. You’ll find that it’s hollow. I need to know if it’s spaceworthy.”

“It seems to be heavily shielded, Captain,” Eviku said. “There’s a lot of nickel-iron throughout the outer layers, as well as a fair percentage of other dense refractory metals, which make scanning difficult. But it appears to contain a significant internal atmosphere.”

One of the millennia-old aphorisms of Sun Tzu, whose works Riker had read thoroughly during his second year at the Academy, returned to him unbidden: “With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth?”

Tuvok crossed back to the tactical station, which was positioned only a few meters from the turbolift doors. “The Vanguard colony is approximately ten kilometers long,” he said, his composure once again recovered and unassailable. “Its girth measures about three kilometers at its widest point.”