Destiny: The Complete Saga: Gods of Night, Mere Mortals, and Lost Souls

by David Mack

  Bacco lifted her own hand high over her head. It came as no great shock to see K’mtok lift his hand, as well. Then, as she looked around the table, she saw Jovis’s hand raised, as well as Endar’s. To her surprise, despite his earlier displays of courtesy and support, Garak’s hands remained at his sides.

  She lowered her hand, and K’mtok, Jovis, and Endar did the same. “All right,” she said. “Who votes no?” As she’d expected, Tezrene, Gren, Zogozin, and Kalavak each lifted a hand or its equivalent to vote nay. To her disappointment, Garak also lifted his hand. That brought Bacco’s roving stare to the Ferengi ambassador, Derro, who cowered behind the Breen diplomat.

  “Ambassador Derro,” Bacco said. “How does the Ferengi Alliance vote?”

  “We’d like to abstain, Madam President.”

  “And I’d like to be able to take a peaceful, month-long vacation on Risa, but we don’t always get what we want, do we? This is a binary question, Your Excellency. You’re either in, or you’re out. Will the Ferengi Alliance stand with the Federation and its allies, or would it prefer to stand alone when the Borg come?”

  Eyes darting from the Breen to the Gorn to the Tholian, Derro was like a bag of nervous flinches disguised as a pudgy, big-eared Ferengi. Finally, he stammered, “I, I mean we, I mean—the Ferengi Alliance votes yes.”

  “Yes to what, Ambassador Derro?” prodded Bacco.

  “We’re in,” he said, suddenly firming his resolve against the hostile glares directed at him by Zogozin and the others. “The Ferengi Alliance stands with the Federation.”

  “Welcome aboard, Ambassador.” She nodded to the motion’s yea votes. “Ambassadors K’mtok, Jovis, and Endar. Thank you for your support. I’d like to ask each of you now to take your leave from these proceedings so that you can make arrangements with your governments to deploy ships and personnel to join our expeditionary force against the Borg.”

  Endar made a small bow in Bacco’s direction. “Right away, Madam President. And might I add, it’s a pleasure to hear a Federation leader who speaks a language Talarians understand.”

  “Her knowledge of thlIngan Hol is equally impressive,” added K’mtok. He nodded to Bacco and followed Endar away from the table. Derro hurried out, close behind them.

  Jovis paused long enough to offer his hand to Bacco, who accepted it. “Humans and Romulans have a long and troubled history, Madam President. But it’s the hope of Empress Donatra that today we can begin a new era of amity between our peoples.”

  “You may tell Empress Donatra that the desire is mutual,” Bacco said. Jovis bowed his head, released her hand, and slipped away, off the dais and out a side door.

  Then, with her allies gone, Bacco turned back toward the table and faced the emissaries of her rivals and foes. “I suggest you all take a seat and get comfortable,” she said. “The easy part is over. Now we get down to business.”

  “We’ve already made our decisions,” Kalavak said, with naked malice. “This summit is over.” He moved to step off the dais and found his path blocked by Agent Wexler.

  The goateed human agent said, “Sit down, Your Excellency.”

  Angry chatter buzzed between Gren and Tezrene, and a steady growl resonated from Zogozin. As before, only Garak maintained an untroubled veneer of civility as Kalavak demanded in a heated tone of voice, “Madam President, what is the meaning of this?”

  “The meaning, Mister Ambassador, is that we’re going to continue discussing this matter until I’m satisfied that all diplomatic possibilities have been exhausted.”

  A wail of staticky noise spewed from Gren’s vocoder, but it was Zogozin who growled with rage and bellowed, “How dare you hold us hostage!”

  In her smoothest and most annoyingly diplomatic timbre, Bacco replied, “Don’t be so melodramatic, Mister Ambassador. You’re not hostages. For the time being, let’s just call you ‘compulsory guests,’ shall we?”

  The Gorn roared with indignation, adding his fury to the cacophonous protests of Gren and Tezrene. Kalavak, for his part, fumed in menacing silence.

  None of their reactions troubled Bacco. The only one who worried her was Garak.

  Because he was utterly serene … and smirking.

  * * *

  Admiral Edward Jellico couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept. A mixture of adrenaline and desperation fueled his continuing struggle to keep his eyes open.

  Sequestered inside his office on the top floor of Starfleet Command Headquarters in San Francisco, he was surrounded by a panorama of holographic displays, all of them crowded with information that had long since begun to bleed together in his vision.

  Fleet deployments. Casualty figures. Probable targets. Projected losses. And an ever-growing queue of communiqués to which he had lost the will to respond.

  He turned away from his desk and plodded to the replicator on the rear wall. “Coffee, hot, double-strong, cream and sugar,” he said, planting one hand against the wall and leaning forward with fatigue. He closed his eyes and for a moment almost drifted into a reverie while listening to the musical drone of his latest caffeine fix swirling into existence. Then, with great effort, he opened his leaden eyelids, picked up his coffee, and shambled back to his desk.

  Sagging back into his chair, he knew that he had no one to blame for his circumstances but himself. You always wanted to be top dog, he chided himself. Should’ve been more careful what you wished for. He sipped his coffee. The sweet liquid warmth felt good in his scratchy throat—he wondered if he was coming down with a cold—but it did nothing to sharpen his dulled senses.

  His door chime sounded.

  He winced, groaned, and said, “Come in.”

  The door slid open, and Admiral Alynna Nechayev stepped inside. She recoiled as soon as she got a good look at him. “Sir, have you been here since last night?”

  “I liked you better when you called me Ed.”

  Nechayev moved farther into his office, and the door closed behind her. “You sound terrible, sir. Let me call a medic.”

  “No,” he said, his voice roughened by the pain in his throat. He planted his stubbled face in his hands and sighed. “They’ll just tell me I need to sleep.”

  “Might be sound advice, sir.”

  “Dammit,” he said, looking up. “Stop calling me that.”

  She put on a mocking air of affront. “Well, excuse me, but you are the appointed C-in-C, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, and I’m giving you a direct order: When we’re alone, call me Ed.” He tried to scowl and ended up coughing instead.

  “Aye-aye, Ed,” said Nechayev, smiling back at him. “Permission to speak freely, Ed?”

  He was too tired to argue, even in jest. “Oh, go ahead.”

  “You’re hanging on too tightly,” she said. “Loosen up. Take a few hours’ downtime—you need it.”

  His head lolled backward against the headrest of his chair. “Not yet,” he said. “There’s too much to do.”

  “And you’re surrounded by thousands of highly trained officers who are ready to get the job done,” she replied. “You need to delegate, Ed. You can’t fight this war by yourself, no matter how much you might want to.” She circled behind his desk and eyed the wraparound wall of holographic data. Pointing at one screen after another, she said, “Let Nakamura handle deployment orders. T’Lara can cut through the red tape with the Council. I’ll take over on strategic planning.”

  “Hang on, now,” Jellico said. “I haven’t authorized—”

  “Ed,” she cut in, “how long has it been since you took off your boots?” She paused while Jellico looked down at his own feet, and then she continued, “By my best estimates, you’ve been awake and cooped up inside this office for almost sixty-one hours. Have you taken off your shoes even once?”

  He tried to make sense of her question and failed. “What are you driving at?”

  “Take off your boots and tell me what condition your feet are in,” she said. “I’ll wait.” The blond woman folded her a
rms and stared at him, her expression stern and unyielding.

  Ignoring the pain in his back, he bent forward, reached down, and struggled to pull off his left boot. “This is the dumbest thing I’ve ev—” The smell hit his nostrils and silenced him. Then he noticed the itching, burning sensation that spread like a brush fire from his toes across the top of his foot.

  “One to go,” Nechayev quipped.

  “No thanks,” Jellico said.

  His longtime friend and colleague shook her head. “Ed, you’re so tired, you couldn’t remember to air out your boots once a day, and you gave yourself a case of what used to be called trench foot. Now get serious—if you couldn’t see that coming, how ready do you think you are to plan a major, multinational counteroffensive against the Borg?”

  Jellico’s head drooped as he felt the inevitability of his surrender close in on him. He really had lost count of the hours as the Borg’s invasion had escalated, and it was time for him to admit he’d gone not only to the limits of his effectiveness but far beyond. And he was simply so very, very tired.

  “I wish I’d never been promoted,” he said grimly.

  Nechayev nodded sympathetically. “I understand,” she said. “Everything seemed so much easier when all we had to worry about was the ship under our feet.”

  “Yeah, that too,” Jellico said. “But mostly I meant that if I hadn’t leapfrogged over you in the chain of command, you could be the one sitting here with trench foot instead of me.”

  All traces of mirth and charity left her face as she departed his office. “Go home and get some sleep.”

  * * *

  Seven of Nine was alone in a room filled with strangers.

  She knew their names and their titles, but that was all. In the ways of knowing that mattered, they were mysteries to her.

  “We need to see what’s worked so far and figure out what’ll work next,” said Raisa Shostakova, the secretary of defense. The highest-ranking person in the Palais de la Concorde conference room, she was human by ancestry but Pangean by birth, and her high-gravity upbringing showed in her short, squat physique. “The crew of the Ranger innovated a phase-shifted attack at Khitomer—”

  “To which the Borg have already adapted,” Seven cut in.

  Jas Abrik, the senior security adviser to President Bacco, and Seven’s direct superior in the governmental chain of command, replied in a tense whisper, “Let her finish first.”

  Shostakova continued, “And, as noted, a subsequent attempt by the Excalibur to repeat the tactic failed. Captain Calhoun and his crew compensated by creating a salvo of variably phased quantum torpedoes, but we have evidence the Collective has already learned to counter this, too.”

  “Undoubtedly,” muttered Seven, who noted Abrik’s glare and added in a confidential tone, “I am reasonably certain she was finished.” Abrik rolled his eyes and looked away.

  Seven held her tongue as the meeting dragged on, rehashing one failed weapon after another. Every time she opened her mouth to offer advice, Abrik silenced her with a look and a wave of his hand. It perplexed her to wonder why these seemingly intelligent individuals were so convinced that the formula for success must lie hidden in the legacy of their myriad failures.

  She longed for her days aboard Voyager in the Delta Quadrant. Despite the awkwardness and loneliness that had come with her separation from the Collective, she had been able to rely on Kathryn Janeway to show her the way back to a human life. It had been as if Janeway had adopted her, instinctively replacing the mother who had been taken from Seven by the Borg.

  Then, after all the travails Janeway had endured to lead her crew home, she herself had been ripped away from Seven by the Borg, and turned into the enemy she had so despised and against which she had struggled so ferociously.

  That loss had left Seven with no comfort except her aunt, Irene Hansen, who now was being stolen from her, day by day, by an incurable, progressive neurological disease. Watching her aunt’s persona disintegrate was like witnessing a slow-motion assimilation. Soon, I will have no one left, Seven realized.

  An irritating voice disrupted her lonely reflections.

  Participating in the meeting via one of the conference room’s wall-mounted viewscreens, Admiral Elizabeth Shelby pursed her lips into a narrow frown. “What about regenerative phasers?”

  The president’s Starfleet Intelligence liaison, Captain Holly Hostetler Richman, shook her head. “Sorry, Admiral. Those failed in the Battle of Acamar.”

  Shelby huffed angrily. “But the transphasic torpedoes still work, don’t they? Why are we being so stingy with them?”

  “Admiral Nechayev’s orders,” Shostakova replied. “She thinks if we use them too much, the Borg might develop a resistance, like bacteria to antibiotics.”

  The fair-haired admiral folded her arms. “Oh, give me a break,” she said, her mouth hinting at a sneer. “How do you develop immunity to something that kills in one shot?”

  Galled by Shelby’s ignorance, Seven replied, “Even death is a learning experience for the Borg. Every time your new weapon destroys another cube, the Collective learns more about it. It is only a matter of time before they adapt a defense.”

  “You almost sound like you admire them, Miss Hansen,” said Shelby, whose narrowed stare conveyed utter contempt for Seven.

  It wasn’t Shelby’s glare that stoked Seven’s ire. “I prefer to be addressed as Seven,” the former Borg drone said, the coldness of her warning leaving no room for debate. The use of her former name was a privilege Seven reserved for her aunt.

  Shostakova picked up a padd from the conference table and used it to call up a tactical display on a secondary viewscreen. “Let’s move on, please, everyone,” she said. “I suggest we leave tactics and weapons development to the experts. For now, I’d like to stay focused on big-picture strategy. Any ideas?”

  Seven folded her hands on the table as she spoke up. “Yes, in fact. Redeploy all your forces to the Azure Nebula.”

  Abrik, seated next to her, coughed as he aspirated a small mouthful of his coffee. Wiping the splatter from his chin and the front of his shirt, he replied, “All of them?”

  “If you are committed to exploiting the transphasic torpedo to its fullest extent, you will have to land a decisive blow as quickly as possible,” Seven said.

  Shelby looked horrified by the suggestion. “Your plan would leave our core systems completely undefended.”

  “They are all but undefended now,” Seven said. “If you wish to prevail against the Borg, you should do exactly as Captain Picard has suggested—go on the attack. Once the Borg enter your space, the momentum of the battle will turn against you.”

  Hostetler Richman threw a dubious look Seven’s way. “If we do send a force through one of those anomalies and find a Borg invasion fleet, how many ships are we likely to face?”

  “That depends,” Seven said.

  “On …?” prodded Shostakova.

  Turning to the secretary, Seven replied, “On whether the Borg intend merely to destroy Earth, or to destroy every world in the Federation and those of all its allies.”

  “Could they really do that?” asked Hostetler Richman.

  Seven met the woman’s fearful stare. “Yes. They can.”

  “Then we ought to seek every advantage,” interjected Captain Miltakka, the president’s liaison to Starfleet Research and Development. The Rigellian amphiboid got up from his chair, picked up a padd, and changed the tactical display on the secondary screen. He pointed out details as he spoke. “Though our ships’ phasers are not compatible with transphasic modulation, their shield emitters can be. I have compiled some upgrade plans that should be compatible with the defensive systems of most of the vessels currently active in Starfleet.” As he sat down, Seven mused that the mottled skin on the back of his head reminded her of a Borg’s complexion.

  “That is a good first step,” Seven began. “However, it will not be enough. To halt the Borg invasion on your own terms, you will ha
ve to resort to more drastic measures.”

  Suspicious stares fell upon Seven from every direction. It was Abrik who dared to ask, “Such as …?”

  “You will need to replicate the thalaron weapon that the Remans made for Shinzon,” Seven said.

  Abrik shot back, “Are you out of your mind?”

  She was barraged by overlapping rebukes from all sides. “It’d violate our treaty with the Romulans,” said Shostakova. Shelby protested, “Do you have any idea what will happen if the Borg capture it?” Hostetler Richman said, “Never mind the risk of it being copied by the Tholians,” and Miltakka added, “It’d defeat the whole point of destroying it in the first place!”

  “It is your only chance,” Seven said, her voice sharp enough to cut through the opposition.

  “It’s illegal,” Shostakova replied. “It’s immoral.”

  “That is irrelevant,” Seven said. “Without it, you do not possess the firepower to stop a full Borg attack fleet.”

  Her insistence was met by denial in the form of shaking heads and closed eyes. They do not trust me. None of them wants to be the first to agree with me.

  “When you find the Borg’s staging area, you will have only one chance to destroy it,” Seven said. “The only weapon you possess that is powerful enough to do so in a single shot, and to which the Borg have not yet adapted, is the thalaron array.”

  Shostakova slammed her palms flat on the tabletop. “I don’t care, Seven,” she said. “Thalaron weapons are an abomination, which is why we signed a treaty outlawing them. The Federation won’t endorse the use of genocidal tactics.”

  “Then I cannot help you,” Seven said, “because the Borg have no such reservations—and they will exterminate you.”

  1519

  6

  There were no hours or days in Axion, only what felt to Erika Hernandez like interminable years of night as the metropolis made its slow transit of the void.

  Hernandez and her fellow survivors from the Columbia basked in the honeyed glow of artificial sunlight. An array of solar lamps had been installed above the courtyard that lay between their respective living quarters. In the long drag of time since they had become stranded in the past, Inyx had arranged new, more spacious accommodations for them at “ground level” in the city, to remove the need for the Caeliar’s energy-intensive version of a turbolift.