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

by David Mack

  Erika’s manner was cautious as she approached the table and, with some effort and apparent mild discomfort, eased herself into a seat across from Fletcher. She gave a shallow sigh, studied the board, and advanced her queen’s pawn to d5.

  Moving a pawn to g3 beside her knight, Fletcher said nothing and waited for Erika’s reaction.

  The captain lifted one eyebrow. “The Réti Opening?” she said. “With the King’s Indian attack? Really?”

  Exhaustion made it easy for Fletcher to betray no reaction to Erika’s brazen inquiry. She spent those moments picturing the likely next sequence of moves, the captures of pawns, the development of pieces for the middlegame. If Erika remained as predictable as always, in five moves Fletcher would be ready to fianchetto the king’s bishop to g2, assert command of the center, and set the stage for a kingside castling.

  A sharp pang in Fletcher’s side made her wince as she reached forward to advance another pawn.

  Although Erika’s eyes never seemed to leave the board, she asked, “Are you all right?”

  “Just a cramp,” Fletcher said.

  The game continued in silence for several minutes, until Erika perplexed Fletcher by making a number of irregular moves. Suddenly, Fletcher’s plan to control the board’s center from its wings with her bishops and knights began to seem unworkable. With equal measures of amusement and irritation, she said, “Don’t tell me—Tayvok’s Gambit?”

  It was Erika’s turn to give away nothing. She folded her hands and continued eyeing the ranks and files of the board.

  “I finished another novel,” Fletcher said. “The sequel to Lightning Shy.”

  Erika steepled her fingers in front of her chin. “Finally. I’ve been waiting for you to resolve that story for ages.” She looked up. “What’s the new book called?”

  “Flashpoint Sinister.”

  The answer stoked Erika’s simmering curiosity. She moved her queen’s bishop to a6. “What does the title mean?”

  “Read it and find out.”

  Before she could take any satisfaction in prolonging Erika’s suspense, Fletcher looked again at the board and saw that she’d been lulled into a careless blunder two moves earlier—a mistake that had become apparent only as more of the pieces were developed by both sides. Within three moves she would either have to risk losing significant pieces or watch her pawn structure collapse under a skewer attack that Erika had developed with remarkable subtlety.

  While Fletcher pondered some strategic adjustments that might let her recover her tempo, Erika remarked casually, “I learned today that a star system I singled out for investigation has been selected as the site of New Erigol. Inyx tells me we’ll reach its Minshara-class planet in less than a year.”

  “That’s great,” Fletcher said, swallowing her anger. It rankled her every day to know that Erika was helping the Caeliar in their search for a new homeworld. As far as Fletcher was concerned, as long as the Caeliar remained her captors, they were the enemy, not to be aided or abetted in any way. But the fact remained that Erika was the captain, and it was up to her to follow the dictates of her own conscience.

  Fletcher let her queen’s knight brave the center as a lure for Erika’s queen. If the bait was taken, Fletcher could capture black’s queen with her bishop; if Erika responded in a more conservative fashion, it would become possible to weaken her kingside pawn structure as a prelude to a check scenario.

  “Once we reach the planet, Inyx says the Caeliar will let us leave the city and live on the surface if we want.” Erika’s tone seemed to be imploring forgiveness from Fletcher. “We could have grass under our feet again, Ronnie. Breathe fresh air.” Getting no reaction from Fletcher, she continued more earnestly. “We could wade in the ocean—a real ocean, not a Caeliar simulation. It wouldn’t be a gift. It’d be more like a well-earned parole.” She had the cautious expression of someone expecting a harangue. “Would that be okay?”

  Fletcher shrugged. “I suppose.”

  Erika shifted her queen to a position from which she could better defend her center, but Fletcher knew that she’d developed her own knights and rooks in ideal positions to pick off Erika’s queen if it tried to interfere with her knight’s burning-and-salting march through Erika’s rear ranks.

  Looking up from her move, Erika said, “The Caeliar would also be willing to build us a house on the surface. Is that an act of charity you could live with, or would you rather build a lean-to and sleep on the ground out of principle?”

  Before answering, Fletcher captured Erika’s king’s bishop with her knight, exposing an important weakness on that flank of Erika’s formation. At the same time, Erika’s previous move, combined with this latest attack, now presented Erika with another imminent threat, this time to her king’s rook. If she moved it to spare it from this discovered attack by Fletcher’s queen, she would lose her queen’s knight and see her king placed in check on the next turn. Or she could let the rook be captured, move the king to delay the inevitable, and—in the most favorable scenario for black—fight on to a stalemate.

  “Sure, build a house,” Fletcher said, as Erika assessed her tactical vulnerabilities. “I’m sure you’ll be very happy in it.”

  Angrily, Erika asked, “What does that mean? You’ll sit here in your ‘cell’ and rot rather than share a real house with me?”

  Fletcher frowned and looked at Erika with tired eyes. “No,” she said, choking down the sickening sensations that swelled upward from her gut. “It means I think I’m dying.”

  2381

  10

  Ezri Dax’s eyes had just adapted to the rings of bluish-white light flashing by on the Aventine’s main viewer when the pulses vanished and released the ship back into normal space with a nerve-wracking shudder.

  “Confirm position,” Dax said.

  Lieutenant Ofelia Mavroidis tapped at the conn and replied, “Delta Quadrant, between the Perseus and Carina arms.”

  Bowers leaned forward in his chair and asked, “Distance from the Azure Nebula?”

  The Ullian woman checked the conn display and replied, “Sixty-four thousand, five hundred ninety-two light-years.”

  Unable to stay seated, Dax got up and moved toward the science station, where Helkara worked with quiet, singular focus. “Gruhn,” Dax said. “What’s the word on the subspace tunnel? Do both ends open to the same frequency?”

  “No, Captain,” Helkara said. “It seems to need a unique frequency pulse for each aperture, just like the passage that brought us from the Gamma Quadrant to the nebula. It’s likely this’ll be true of all the tunnels.”

  Turning his chair toward the tactical console, Bowers asked, “Any sign of the Borg out here?”

  Ensign Padraic Rhys, the gamma-shift tactical officer, replied, “Negative. But we’re picking up a massive debris field bearing three-three-one mark one-five.” The fair-haired, broad-shouldered young Welshman made rapid adjustments on his panel as he continued, “Lots of refined metals—duranium, rodinium, terminium, and semirigid polyduranide.”

  Dax asked Rhys, “Enough mass to suggest a starship?”

  “More like a hundred thousand ships, sir,” Rhys said. “It’s pockets of pulverized metal orbiting the nearest star system.”

  Curiosity nagged at Dax. “Range?”

  “Just under a light-year,” Rhys said.

  Mavroidis swiveled her chair around from the conn. “At top speed, we could reach the debris ring in about an hour.”

  “I don’t think we can afford the distraction,” Bowers said, rising from his chair. He walked over to join Dax. “We should hold station while Gruhn works out the aperture frequency for our return trip.”

  The lithe Zakdorn science officer looked up and flashed a crooked smile that lifted his facial ridges. “Don’t hang around on my account. This’ll take a few hours, at least.”

  “Ofelia,” Dax said, “set a course for the debris field. I want to check it out.”

  Leaning in close, Bowers said in a quiet voice,
“Captain, if something did destroy hundreds of thousands of ships, we could be heading into a trap.”

  “Or maybe we just found an archaeological treasure,” Dax said. She noted the grim frown that was deepening the creases on Bowers’s face, and she relented a bit in her enthusiasm. “A little caution never hurts, though. Mister Rhys, scan the region for subspace radio activity and any other artificial signals.”

  “Aye, Captain,” said Rhys.

  While the tactical officer executed his sensor sweep, Mavroidis reported, “Course plotted and laid in, Captain.”

  Rhys finished his scans and said, “No short-range signal activity, Captain. Minimal subspace radio traffic at long range. No sign of transwarp signatures or other vessels.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Dax said. “Helm, maximum warp. Engage.”

  The Aventine resonated with the rising hum of its warp engines accelerating to their limits, and the stars on the main viewer became snap-flashes of light coursing past the ship. “Warp nine-point-nine-seven,” Mavroidis said, reading from her gauges. “Warp nine-point-nine-eight. Warp nine-point-nine-nine and holding steady, Captain.”

  Dax walked back to her chair, and Bowers followed her. As she sat down, she said to him, “Don’t look so glum, Sam. We might actually learn something while we’re stuck out here.”

  “It’s not the learning that worries me,” Bowers said as he settled into his own seat beside hers. “I just have to wonder if any of that debris is from ships whose captains also got a little bit curious.”

  She teased him, “Y’know, Sam, for someone who likes to think of himself as ‘a man of action,’ you sure don’t—”

  “Long-range contacts,” interrupted Rhys. “Multiple bogeys leaving the debris-ringed system.”

  Bowers called back, “Speed and heading?”

  “Warp two,” Rhys said. “Intercept course. At that speed, they’ll reach the debris field around the same time we will.”

  The first officer narrowed his eyes as he looked back at Dax. “I suppose this’ll go in your log as a coincidence.”

  “Maybe,” Dax said, conceding nothing to her XO’s anxiety.

  Ensign Svetlana Gredenko—a woman whose mixed human and Rigellian ancestry was betrayed only by her eyes’ disturbing, crimson-hued irises—swiveled around from the ops console and asked Dax, “Captain, should we consider breaking off our investigation of the debris field?”

  “No,” Dax said. “Whatever’s on its way out to meet us knows we’re here. If it’s friendly, I want to make contact.”

  The XO kinked one eyebrow. “And if it’s not …?”

  “Then we’ll have to hope we can outsmart it, outrun it, or outgun it, in that order. Steady as she goes.” As the rest of the bridge crew returned to work at their posts, Dax leaned toward Bowers and added in a low whisper, “However, it might not be a bad idea to take the ship to Yellow Alert.”

  He triggered the intraship klaxon, which whooped once and left golden warning-status lights activated on bulkheads around the bridge. “I thought you’d never ask,” he said.

  * * *

  Beverly Crusher heard someone limp into the Enterprise’s sickbay and grunt with pain. She looked up from the padd in her hand to steal a glance out her office door.

  It was Commander Worf. He was garbed in a loose, off-white exercise garment, similar to the gi he usually donned during martial-arts training. This one was scuffed and torn in places. His nose and upper lip were bleeding, and his right arm dangled limply beneath his drooped shoulder.

  “Worf!” she said, bolting from her chair and jogging to him. “What happened?”

  “I was exercising.” He tried to turn his head to the right, stopped, and winced. “I fell.”

  She picked up a medical tricorder from an equipment cart and made a fast scan of his injuries. “Looks like you fell several times,” she said with a teasing gleam. “In addition to your broken clavicle, you’ve got four cracked ribs and multiple deep bruises all over your body.”

  “It was a very good workout,” he said.

  “I’m sure it was,” Crusher said. She nodded to the closest biobed. “Have a seat. I’ll get the osteofuser.” Worf eased himself onto the bed as Beverly rooted through the lower drawers of the equipment cart.

  “Once we fix the break, I’ll take the swelling down on those bruises,” she said. With the surgical implement in hand, she stepped in front of the seated Klingon and asked, “Do you want any anesthetic before I reset the bone?”

  He shook his head once. “No.”

  “Suit yourself.” She placed the surgical device on the bed. Then she put her left hand behind his right shoulder and tensed her right hand in front of his broken clavicle. “This’ll hurt. A lot. You need to promise not to hit me.”

  His glare betrayed his fraying sense of humor. “I will try not to. Please proceed.”

  She slammed her palm into his jutting clavicle and hammered it back into place with one strike.

  His bellow of agony and fury was deafening. Crusher recoiled from his roar and covered her ears. Averting her eyes from his, she saw that his hands were clenched white-knuckle tight on the edges of the biobed.

  Then he was silent and gasping for breath to relax himself. “Thank you,” he said.

  “You’re welcome,” she replied.

  He sat with his eyes closed while she used the osteofuser to mend his clavicle. “I haven’t seen you do this to yourself in a while,” she remarked. “Are the holoprograms getting tougher, or are you getting a bit careless?”

  Her observation opened his eyes, and he pondered her words for a moment before he replied, “I felt it was time for a greater challenge.” She finished fixing the bone and adjusted the fuser. He rotated his arm forward once and twice in reverse, and he seemed satisfied. “Much better.”

  “Good. Open your jacket and let me fix your ribs.”

  As he untied his black belt and opened his jacket, Worf said, “I did not expect to find you here so late.”

  “I wasn’t planning on being here,” she said, starting work on his left side, which was purpled with bruises. “But we didn’t stabilize the critical cases from last night’s battle until after 0800, and it was almost 1300 by the time I scrubbed out of surgery.” Switching her efforts to the cracked ribs on his right side, she continued, “I didn’t get to sleep until almost 1400, and I woke up a few hours ago. Now my sleep cycle’s completely turned around. I’ll probably be up all night.”

  Satisfied that his ribs were healed, she switched off the fuser and traded it for a tissue regenerator. “You know, Worf, as your doctor, I really have to suggest you ease up on your calisthenics programs. You’re not getting any younger, and—”

  She was interrupted by the opening of the sickbay door. The ship’s security chief, Lieutenant Jasminder Choudhury, stumbled in looking haggard and disheveled. Her long, wavy black hair was a wild mess, and the left side of her face was an indigo bruise. Rips, bloodstains, and streaks of dirt marred her flowing, orange athletic garment.

  Crusher rushed to Choudhury’s side and helped her to the biobed next to Worf’s. “And what’s your story?” she asked.

  “I fell,” Choudhury said. “In the holodeck.”

  The lieutenant’s choice of words made Crusher throw a curious look at Worf. Then she said to Choudhury, “Let me guess: a ‘calisthenics’ program?”

  “Rock-climbing simulation,” Choudhury replied.

  Reaching for her tricorder, Crusher mumbled, “I’ll bet.” She scanned the security chief and was not surprised by what she found. “Seven cracked ribs, a hairline fracture of your skull, and a mild concussion. Plus, more bruises than I can count.” Closing the tricorder, she added, “Ever heard of safety protocols, Lieutenant?” Choudhury seemed content not to respond to that query. “Mister Worf, I’m afraid you’ll have to live with your bruises for a few minutes while I see to the lieutenant.”

  “I can wait,” Worf said.

  Crusher retrieved the osteofuser a
nd set herself to work on closing up the microfissures in Choudhury’s ribs and skull.

  Worf and Choudhury’s situation seemed so transparent that Crusher couldn’t help but be amused. Odd as it seemed at first, she understood it. In the face of so much death and horror, it was natural to want to affirm life in the most potent ways possible. Seeing the two of them together, she appreciated for the first time that, for all of their superficial differences, the XO and the security chief had a great deal in common. It made sense to her that they would be drawn to each other.

  A few minutes later, as Crusher treated Choudhury’s concussion, she chided her, “When it comes to using holodecks without safeties, I expect that kind of thing from Worf. But I thought security personnel were smart enough to know better.”

  “I admit, I was careless,” Choudhury said. “Maybe I just got a bit overconfident.”

  “That’s possible.” She switched off the subdural probe and looked at Worf. “What’s your excuse?”

  “An error,” he said. “I misjudged the skill level of my … new holoprogram.”

  “I have a simpler explanation,” Crusher said. “I think you two beat each other up.”

  Worf shot an intense look at Choudhury, who remained as serene as ever. The security chief’s cool discipline over her passions went a long way toward explaining why she won so many more hands than Worf did at the senior staff’s poker games.

  “Relax,” Crusher said to Worf. “I won’t tell anyone. But if you two keep this up, I won’t have to.”

  Cooling his glare to a frown, Worf said, “Thank you. For your discretion.”

  “Please,” Crusher said, with raised eyebrows, a reassuring smile, and a weary chortle. “I’m married to the captain. Discretion’s my middle name.”

  * * *

  The closer the Aventine got to one of the vast pockets of dark, metallic debris, the more anxious Sam Bowers became.

  “Two minutes until the alien craft enters optimal sensor range,” reported Ensign Gredenko.