Текст книги "The Red King "

Автор книги: Michael Martin

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

Will nodded, his expression serious. “I didn’t think she’d try to lie right in front of you, especially about something as serious as killing Suran.”

“Me neither. But she’s definitely holding back something.”

“About Suran?”

Troi shrugged. “Perhaps. But whatever it is she’s concealing, I think it must be something quite important.”

He sighed, apparently satisfied that there was no way to solve this mystery anytime soon. He turned toward Dakal, and quietly ordered him to send Donatra the “go” signal she was waiting for.

Troi stared straight ahead at the Valdore.

Just what is it you think you still have to hide from us, Donatra?

She had no answers. Only the hope that their ally’s penchant for keeping secrets would get no one else killed.

Chapter Nineteen

U.S.S. TITAN,STARDATE 57047.6

When Titancame out of warp, Riker could feel it right through the bridge deck plates. He stood restlessly just in front of the forward flight control console as Ensign Lavena brought the impulse engines on line, guiding the starship and the towing convoy toward the last leg of its journey back to Romulan space.

Remaining aboard his ship while key members of his crew—specifically Vale, Tuvok, Keru, and most of Titan’s medical staff—were elsewhere, and quite possibly in danger, was an aspect of command that he doubted he’d ever get fully used to. Even when he knew that he’d deployed his people where they were needed most. After all, the Neyel soldiers Riker had deputized as Vanguard’s peace-keepers needed some oversight to ensure that minority species, such as the cattle-like aboriginal Oghen, were treated well.

Besides, the away team would still be in danger, even here,he reminded himself for perhaps the hundredth time. He thought of his wife, who had finally—if reluctantly—agreed to return to their quarters for a few hours of much-needed sleep. According to Dr. Ree, her time on Vanguard working among the refugees had left her emotionally exhausted, no doubt because of her powerful empathic sensitivities. Deanna isn’t any safer than the away team just because she’s come back aboardTitan . None of us will be safe until after this mission is over. And maybe not even then.

He turned toward Cadet Dakal, who was working the ops console situated at Lavena’s right. “Aft view, please, Cadet.”

“Aye, sir.”

Dakal touched the panel before him, and the image on the viewscreen suddenly shifted to the starfield that lay astern of Titan,and the multitude of Romulan warbirds that followed her only a few hundred kilometers behind.

In another context, the sight of dozens of heavily armed Romulan vessels approaching from astern, and in apparent battle formation, would have thrown Riker’s nervous system straight into fight-or-flight red alert status. Despite the close working relationship he had developed with Commander Donatra, his pulse quickened as he studied the swooping, aggressive lines of the phalanx of warships, several of which moved quickly out of position and back again from moment to moment as they responded to Titan’s navigational hazard data. Brief golden-orange and emerald flashes of light speared the empty space near the dodging warbirds as local space continued its violent process of unraveling. With the assistance of a fleetwide subspace radio-linked computer network, tractor beams and warp fields alike made near constant adjustments to the shifts in ship distances and spatial geometries.

“This had better work,” he said, thinking out loud.

From behind him, a deep, sonorous voice answered. “Your staff has given it a strong vote of confidence, Captain.”

Riker turned and found himself facing Akaar, who stood on the upper bridge, a position that made him look positively gigantic.

“And I agree with them, Admiral,” Riker said, more for the sake of bridge morale than for Akaar’s benefit. There really was no good alternative to optimism, under the circumstances.

But this stunt will either get us home or make us all very dead. We could still end up stuck here while Magellanic space finishes erasing itself.

Riker returned his attention to the main viewscreen. Focusing past the dozen or so ships that were visible in the foreground, he studied the bulbous, slowly spinning shape that Donatra’s warbirds had so carefully shepherded here over the past two days.

The Vanguard habitat lay at the center of the escort formation, whose constituent vessels even now continued weaving and yawing to avoid the rips the Red King was constantly tearing into the fabric of local space, all the while maintaining tractor beam contact with Vanguard. A tactical overlay showed the elaborate cat’s cradle of intersecting beams that linked each ship in the fleet—including Titan—with the ancient O’Neill colony in order to find safety for the two million or so anxious souls contained within. For a moment, Riker could imagine that the Romulan ships truly were the predatory birds they resembled; only rather than pursuing prey, they were guarding a precious egg whose hatching was imminent.

A little more than two million people,Riker thought. Though he was thankful that the numbers of Neyel settlers and Oghen aborigines that had been rescued would enable both species to survive, he couldn’t stop thinking about the nearly two billion that the convoy had been forced to leave behind because of lack of time and resources.

Oghen, a world that had nurtured its own sapient life-forms for millennia—as well as a unique human society for centuries—was now gone forever. Utterly erased from existence by the continued encroachment of an expanding protouniverse.

But those cultures still have a chance to live on,Riker thought, doing his best to maintain a positive outlook. And once we get this habitat someplace where those cultures can take root and flourish, we can finally get to know them better.

As he continued watching the convoy’s almost balletic motions, a flash of wan yellow light erupted momentarily on the asteroid’s rocky exterior, sending a considerable volume of gray-black basaltic debris arcing into space. For an instant, the effect cast Vanguard’s rough, cratered surface into sharp relief, and glinted off the silvery remnants of an ancient cluster of what appeared to be communications antennae. This was by no means the first time Riker had watched the asteroid suffer a direct hit from the Red King’s ever-more-frequently occurring energy discharges; still, the sight made him wince.

“Asteroid status?” Riker asked Jaza, who was diligently monitoring Titan’s sensor web from his post on the starboard side of the upper bridge.

“No serious damage, Captain,” the Bajoran science officer said. “Just some minor rearrangement of the surface rock layers.”

Riker touched the combadge on his chest. “Riker to away team.”

“Vale here, Captain.”

Riker spared a quick glance at Jaza. The science officer appeared visibly relieved to hear the exec’s voice. “How are things holding together inside Vanguard, Chris?”

“So far Keru, Tuvok, and I have managed to persuade almost everybody riding inside this rock with us not to riot. With a little help from our entire security complement, Frane, and our former guests from the Neyel military, that is.”

Riker couldn’t quite suppress a smile. He felt a surge of pride at Frane’s newfound sense of duty to his people.

“We could probably do with a little less shelling, though,”Vale continued, an edge of acerbic humor audible in her tone. “Dr. Ree and Dr. Onnta have their claws and hands full enough already without having to deal with an explosive decompression event on top of all the other injuries.”

Yet another flash of light briefly illuminated the surface of Vanguard, reminding Riker of a brilliant meteor shower he’d witnessed over Valdez during his thirteenth summer. Fortunately, this latest conflagration did not appear to have reached the habitat’s vitals. But even with the emergency forcefield generators Dr. Ra-Havreii’s engineering team had placed in strategic locations along Vanguard’s surface, Riker knew that the habitat’s luck couldn’t hold out forever; being ten kilometers long, the great rock simply couldn’t weave and dodge the way her tow ships could, no matter how quickly Titan’s sensor web distributed the real-time navigational hazard data it gathered.

Even though Vanguard’s human builders had taken the precaution of arranging the habitat’s interior into many independent, airtight sections—thereby preventing a single small hull breach from taking out the colony’s entire population—the death toll that would result from the blowout of an entire section would be in the thousands.

Riker took this latest light show as a signal that time was growing dangerously short. “We’ll keep doing our best to avoid the worst of the bumps, Chris,” he said. “How are the refugees doing psychologically?”

“I think we all have our hands full keeping passenger morale about as steady as you’re keeping Vanguard. Fortunately, we’ve got some expert help.”

“I thought Counselor Huilan and Counselor Haaj might come in handy over there.”

“Oh, they have, Captain, believe me. But I was referring to somebody else: Mekrikuk. Granted, a few of the Neyel have reacted to him as though he’s a monster straight out of a fairy tale. But he seems to have exerted a strong calming influence on a lot of the more agitated folks we’ve encountered here.”

Riker was gratified to hear that. He was pleased to discover that such projective telepathy had an application other than wanton violence; he couldn’t help but hope that the Federation authorities would look kindly on Mekrikuk’s request for political asylum.

“You’re doing great work, Chris. I need you to try to keep a lid on things just a little while longer,” Riker said. “The convoy is approaching the periphery of the Red King now. We’ll be making the passage through the rift in just a few minutes. We’ll see you on the other side. Titanout.”

He stepped back down to the bridge’s center and took his seat. “Restore forward view, please, Cadet,” he said. “Full magnification.”

Dakal entered a short series of commands into his console. The viewscreen responded by replacing Donatra’s fleet with a slowly swirling mass of glowing, multicolored clouds that might have been constructed out of the universe’s entire stockpile of anger and violence.

The tendrils of energy that had seemed relatively benign some eight days earlier, when Titan,the Valdore,and the Dughhad first emerged from the center of the phenomenon, now seemed almost malevolent, bringing to mind the grasping fingers of some hungry carnivore. Their colors had shifted down toward the red and orange end of the spectrum, with the more peaceful blues and greens muted almost into oblivion. Explosive energy discharges appeared and vanished within the effect’s apparently infinite depths, the interspatial equivalent of violent thunderstorms.

The Red King, preparing to snap out of the dream that keeps this corner of the universe running,Riker thought as he stared at the towering, ocher-and-crimson vista that filled the screen. Or is it the Sleeper, getting ready to wake up and replace everything around him with a brand-new Creation?

Even now, he still wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to call this thing, or how it ought to be characterized. All he knew for certain was that the phenomenon was now far more than part of the cosmic cenotaph that marked the sacrifice of his late friend and colleague, Data. It was an emergent universe that threatened to displace a goodly portion of this one. It had already killed billions, and would wipe out countless more if left to expand unchecked.

Sleeper or sovereign, this thing had to be sent back to wherever it had come from, and as quickly as possible.

Lavena turned her chair to face Riker, her hydration suit gurgling almost inaudibly as she moved. He saw that she was smiling through the semitransparent breathing mask that covered most of her face. “Navigational sensors have just made contact with the Dugh,sir.”

“Confirmed, Captain,” Dakal said, his gaze riveted to the viewscreen, where the dark shape of a battered Vor’cha-class cruiser was swiftly differentiating itself from the energy tendrils that appeared to be trying to grasp it like some sea monster out of Earth’s ancient maritime legends. “The Klingons seem to be right where we left them.”

Riker wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t expected Tchev to cut and run prematurely.

“Hail them, Cadet.”

The overflowing violence of the still-growing protouniverse disappeared a moment later, replaced by Captain Tchev’s scowling visage. Lieutenant Dekri, Tchev’s female second officer, was visible just beyond her superior’s right shoulder.

“You’re back, Riker,”the Klingon commander said. “At last.”

“QaleghmeH Qaq DaHjaj,”Riker said with a small wry smile. “Nice to see you, too, Captain Tchev. Thanks for keeping the porch light burning for us, by the way.”

Despite his good-humored banter, Riker found that he had to push back a small feeling of resentment; he reminded himself that Tchev’s refusal to assist in the Oghen evacuation stemmed from the horrendously damaged condition of his ship rather than from cowardice. Donatra hadn’t been wrong when she’d pointed out that the Dughneeded far more help in getting home than Tchev could contribute.

“We would not have waited for you much longer, Captain. The local spatial effects are becoming more intense by the hour.”

Riker wondered whether the Dughcould have survived another crossing through the anomaly on its own, but declined to speculate on the matter aloud. If Tchev needed a tow, Riker would see to it without going out of his way to humiliate the Klingons.

“Then we won’t waste any more time getting our ships under way,” Riker said.

Tchev grunted just before he and Dekri vanished, their images supplanted by that of the roiling spatial rift. Riker supposed that the Klingon captain’s surlier-than-usual mood had been inspired by the Dugh’s present vulnerability, and its unaccustomed reliance on outside aid. My old friend Klag got used to having just one good arm,Riker thought. So I think you’ll get over having your ship towed home, Tchev. Eventually.

“Incoming hail, Captain,” Dakal reported crisply. “It’s the Valdore.”

“On screen, Cadet.”

A moment later, Riker’s Romulan counterpart regarded him from the center of the viewscreen. “Captain Riker. My apologies for not calling you in time to offer my regards to Captain Tchev.”

Though her face was impassive, something smoldered behind her dark eyes. At that moment he had never wanted Deanna at his side more badly. Donatra was listening in on my conversation with Tchev,he thought. And she doesn’t mind letting me know about it.

He forced those dark thoughts aside; it was time to get down to business. “Titanis ready to move out. We’ll take the Dughin tow, since your fleet is already doing so much of the work of moving the Vanguard habitat.”

Donatra slowly shook her head. “I am concerned thatTitan may stretch her resources too thin by towing theDugh , Captain.”

“It’s nothing my chief engineer can’t handle.”

“But the lives of my crews depend on your enhanced sensing equipment keeping us clear of spatial disruptions. As well as the lives of the millions aboard that asteroid colony.”

Riker couldn’t find fault with Donatra’s logic. With so many dozens of powerful Romulan tractor beams drawing Vanguard and the Dughtoward the spatial rift, the absence of Titan’s tractors wouldn’t make much difference; the energy necessary to run them would indeed be better applied to warning the convoy of the potentially lethal spatial distortions and zero-point discharges that kept popping up from moment to moment.

“All right, Commander,” Riker said. “I have no objection to your fleet towing the Dugh.Captain Tchev might not agree, though.”

“He would appear to have few viable alternatives, Captain. Unless he is more eager than I think he is to fly straight into whatever afterworld his people believe in. At any rate, my fleet will be ready to enter the Great Bloom”—she turned away momentarily, apparently to consult with a subordinate– “in five of your minutes.Valdore out.”

Donatra abruptly vanished. In her place on the viewscreen appeared the Red King’s long energy tendrils, brilliant against the stygian blackness of Magellanic space. They seemed to beckon Titanforward, toward the phenomenon’s dark central maw.

Or perhaps they were trying to warn her to stay away.

VANGUARD

“We’re all going to die here, Frane,” Nozomi said, her lovely, gray face shadowed and haunted in the habitat’s dim interior illumination. With over two million people now dependent upon Holy Vangar for their survival—a far greater number than had ever before ridden aboard the Sacred Vessel—all resources were at a premium, including energy for the lights.

At that precise moment, Holy Vangar shuddered and rocked like a gigantic bell struck by an equally colossal clapper. The lights dimmed even further, and Frane could feel the intense vibrations rising into his legs and hips through his bare feet, which were splayed on the cold stone floor. He reached out and grabbed Nozomi, preventing her from falling as his tail reached out to anchor his body against one of the ancient public gallery’s many metal railings. Shouts and cries spread through the crowd like a chill stormwind blowing through stalks of grain.

Somewhere, lost inside that increasingly agitated multitude, were Lofi, g’Ishea, and Fasaryl, the three non-Neyel members of Frane’s Seekers After Penance prayersect. Hours after the chaotic mass motions of the crowd had separated Frane and Nozomi from their spiritual brethren, Frane could only hope that they were still all right.

Watching the milling throng of confused and bedraggled refugees—Frane supposed there were thousands of Neyel of all ages present in this gallery alone, mixed with what might have been dozens or perhaps even hundreds of Oghen aboriginals—Frane was hard-pressed to tell Nozomi that she was wrong. If these people succumb to panic,he thought, then we’ll all be just as doomed as if Vangar had collided with a neutron star.

Frane took both of Nozomi’s hands between his own. He spoke soothingly to her, as though by calming Nozomi he might also comfort all two-million-plus of the lost, homeless souls who now clung to life within the very same habitat that had brought the First Neyel to the Coreworld of Oghen centuries ago.

“We didn’t survive the destruction of the Coreworld only to die in the Sleeper’s shadow,” he told her, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt. “Riker will see us safely beyond His reach.”

“How can you be so certain of that?”

He wasn’tcertain, not in the slightest. But if he didn’t cling to hope, then what did he have left? He considered mentioning a Starfleet mission report he had listened to shortly after he had first come aboard Titan;the translated audio recounted how a much smaller number of vessels had successfully tractored an enormous space station across an interstellar distance. There was no reason to doubt that Titanand the Romulan flotilla could accomplish the same feat with Holy Vangar.

As he gazed silently into her deep, dark eyes, a sudden inspiration seized him, prompting him to put aside the space station tale. Instead, he raised his right hand, allowing the sleeve to draw itself back in Vangar’s gentle, spin-generated artificial gravity.

“I’m certain we’re going to make it because I still have to take thisback to where it belongs,” Frane said, holding his story bracelet up and turning it into the dim light so she could see it clearly.

“Your father’s wristlet?” Nozomi said, clearly puzzled. “But there’s no way to bring it home, Frane. The Sleeper has swept the Coreworld away.”

His answer was interrupted by a low rumble that he felt coming up from beneath the stone floor—“down” being the direction of Holy Vangar’s outer crust—just before he actually heard it. Then came a roaring detonation whose report swiftly reached deafening proportions even as it rocked the Holy Vessel far more roughly than any previous blow the habitat had sustained.

An alarm klaxon, unused for ages and nearly inaudible beneath the rising din, echoed across the cavernous gallery.

Then darkness fell, and panicked screams drowned out everything else.

I.K.S. DUGH

“Captain!” Dekri shouted. Her voice strained to be heard over the violent thrumming of the Dugh’s overtaxed engines.

“Report, Lieutenant,” Tchev said, turning his command chair toward his de facto first officer’s station. His gauntleted hands gripped the arms of his chair as though he might be thrown loose from it at any moment.

“I am detecting variances in the tractor beams the Romulan fleet has attached to us,” Dekri said, sending an illustrative graphic to the bridge’s central viewscreen. It presented a wireframe rendering of the Dugh,tethered to perhaps a half-dozen straight lines attached to structurally strategic portions of the Klingon warship’s compromised hull. Some of those energy tethers appeared to be pulling more tightly than others.

“Do you see what they’re doing, Captain?” Dekri said, fear and anger coloring her words.

Tchev bared his teeth as he studied the torsions that threatened to pull the Dugh’s starboard impulse generator apart. “Lock whatever weapons we have upon the Valdore! Send all available hands to battle stations.”

The hull moaned, making a sound like Gre’thor’s massed hordes of Fek’lhr.

“At once, sir,” Dekri said, in tones that made it clear that she realized how hopeless the situation was. She knew as well as he did that the Dughwas in no shape for combat. But they would die in battle because of this order, at least technically. He prayed it would be enough to get him and his crew into Sto-Vo-Kor.

“Ensign Krodak! Get me Titan.Riker must be told what those cowardly Romulan petaQare trying to—” Tchev was interrupted by a sound as thunderous as an eruption of the Kri’stak Volcano on Qo’noS, followed by infinite darkness.

U.S.S. TITAN

“The Vanguard habitat has begun venting atmosphere, Captain,” Jaza reported, his manner calm but intensely concerned. “I’m reading unprotected bodies in space. That last spatial disruption evidently disabled at least one of our emergency forcefield generators and tore all the way through into the asteroid’s hollow interior.”

Damn!Riker thought, gripping the armrests of his command chair nearly hard enough to snap them off entirely. “How bad is the damage?”

Jaza remained intent on his console and the readouts that were quickly scrolling there. “The good news is that the outgassing is falling off quickly. I’d estimate from the volume of atmosphere vented that only one pressurized section has been compromised. They were fortunate.”

Except for the people who happened to be in that section,Riker thought. “Can the people in that section be beamed out?”

“Not without lowering our shields,” Jaza said, sounding stricken. “We can’t do that, and neither can any of the other ships in the convoy. Even if there were enough time, and if there weren’t so much refractory metal in the asteroid’s crust…” He trailed off, his meaning plain. Although there had been some documented cases of Neyel surviving for prolonged periods in a hard vacuum, everyone in the space-exposed section was sure to die.

Riker nodded slowly. “How many casualties?”

“It’s hard to say for certain, sir,” Dakal said, facing Riker from the forward ops station. “Upwards of ten thousand, I would estimate.”

Riker’s shoulders sagged as though he’d been dealt a physical blow. He tried not to picture the faces of the children, the elderly, the helpless. Not to mention Vale, Keru, Tuvok, Mekrikuk, and the medical and security teams still working among the Vanguard refugees.

The bridge shook and rattled as though Titanhad come under attack. Riker spun his chair back in Jaza’s direction. “Titanhas just crossed the phenomenon’s event horizon, Captain,” said Ensign Lavena, her gloved, webbed fingers entering commands into her console at a rapid clip.

“Shield status?” Riker asked.

“Shields at ninety-four percent and holding,” said Dakal. He sounded intensely relieved that the passage home was so much smoother than Titan’s accidental arrival in the Small Magellanic Cloud had been. At least so far.

“Convoy status?”

Dakal touched one of the control surfaces before him, bringing a tactical diagram up on the main viewscreen. A congeries of blips dutifully appeared, representing Vanguard and the Romulan fleet. The convoy blips were towing the Vanguard blip through a wireframe representation of the Red King and the interspatial corridor that ran directly through its heart. A large white icon that represented Titanwas taking the point, leading the way for the entire procession.

“Everything seems to be going according to plan, Captain,” Lavena said unnecessarily.

“Sensor web remains fully operational,” Dakal reported. “All navigational hazard telemetry links show green as well.”

“At least the Vanguard habitat doesn’t seem to be taking any further hits,” Jaza said. “Probably because we’re approaching the midpoint of the spatial rift.”

The eye of the storm,Riker thought. He fervently hoped they wouldn’t encounter still more trouble once they reached the other side, where Romulan space presumably awaited them.

“Crossing the midpoint…now,” Lavena said.

“The Valdoreis signaling, Captain,” said Dakal. “Twenty-nine of her ships have just jettisoned their warp cores, per our simulations. The crippled vessels are riding their own collapsing warp bubbles to the other side.”

Feeling a sensation of pins and needles in both his hands, Riker realized that he was once again gripping his chair arms far too hard. He released them with a conscious effort.

“Brace yourselves,” Jaza said. “The subspace shock wave should reach us in thirty-one seconds.”

Riker touched his combadge again. “Riker to Ra-Havreii.”

“Engineering. Ra-Havreii here.”

“This is the part where you earn your combat pay, Commander. The shields are your highest priority.”

“We’re ready for anything, Captain,”said the chief engineer, though the tremulous undertone in his voice didn’t inspire a great deal of confidence. Don’t fold up on me now, Doctor,Riker thought.

“Something’s wrong,” Jaza said sharply.

Of course,Riker thought, rising from his chair and crossing to the railing that ran alongside the main science station. “What’s the problem, Jaza?”

The Bajoran shook his head in confusion, his nasal wrinkles spreading upward and onto his forehead. “It’s the Dugh,sir. I’m reading extreme stresses on her outer hull. Maybe she isn’t standing up to Donatra’s tractor beams as well as we thought she would.”

Oh, no.Riker paused to study Jaza’s readouts momentarily before turning his attention back to the main viewscreen’s tactical display. Please let me be wrong.“Cadet Dakal, hail Captain Tchev and try to warn him. And get me Donatra.”

“Aye, Captain.”

At that precise instant, the viewscreen blip that represented the Klingon vessel abruptly brightened, then vanished.

Ashen-faced, Dakal turned from his console to face Riker. “Captain, the Dugh’s hull has just collapsed. She was completely destroyed in the resulting reactor explosion.”

Deanna told me you were hiding something, Donatra,Riker thought, a white-hot anger searing the inside of his chest as he returned to his seat. And now I think I know what it was.The chair’s autorestraints gently snapped into place across his thighs as the final seconds before the shock wave’s approach ticked away.

Titanrocked again, this time far more violently than before. The bridge seemed to invert completely before righting itself. The lights failed. Darkness enfolded Riker, as though he suddenly had been plunged beneath the frigid waters of Becharof Lake during an Alaskan winter.

He ceased thinking about the Dugh,the convoy, the Vanguard colony, the away team, the Red King, and everything else.