Vanguard,BookOne

by David Mack

  D’Amato had almost had time enough to congratulate herself for her ingenuity when the self-destruct system detonated.

  Aboard the Tholian battle cruiser Nov’k Tholis, Commander Larskene [The Silver] enabled the subspace thoughtwave. Projecting his thought-colors into the Warrior Castemoot SubLink, he petitioned, via the Lattice InterLink, for an audience with the Ruling Conclave of the Political Castemoot. His salutation was met with warm tones of concordance.

  The inter-voice of Falstrene [The Gray] echoed across the InterLink, deep with pensive undertones. Is it done?

  All but the last. Larskene shared facets of memory salvaged from his caste-peers aboard the four destroyed vessels. First was the self-immolation of the Starfleet vessel, along with the Tik’r Tholis.

  Velrene [The Azure] chimed into the InterLink, coruscating with dismay. Why was a Federation ship there?

  Defending their outpost. Larskene skipped back along the memory-line to the bombardment of the planet. He highlighted sensing-unit transcriptions of the planet’s surface, which showed a humanoid settlement in the exact location of the target.

  Crimson agitation swelled in the Ruling Conclave. Angry colors washed down through the thoughtwave InterLink to Larskene. The elite Castemoot’s discussion was closed to him. He heard only what they elected to share. The flare of rage in the topmost layer of the Lattice darkened with hues of suspicion and flickered as the collective debated.

  Mellisonant tones overlapped as the InterLink reopened, and he was hailed by Azrene [The Violet]. Her soothing thoughtcolors lacked sincerity. What is the status of the fleet?

  Dozens of points of view coursed upward through the InterLink, projected by Larskene, who had culled them from across the attack fleet’s private SubLink as the battle raged. Images overlapped of the lead Tholian cruiser, the Sek’t Tholis, succumbing to a prolonged barrage by the Federation warship. His own crew offered four distinct perspectives on the enemy’s engineered collision of the Tas’v Tholis and the Kil’j Tholis.

  A bland gray hum signaled a momentary muting of the InterLink. Larskene took the opportunity to clarify his mind-line and infuse his Lattice-hue with a tint of confidence.

  Dulcet tones called him back to loyal attention.

  Yazkene [The Emerald] was shrouded in dark colors. The Federation has come too far to turn back. His images were simple and direct, the plan of action clear. When it is done, return to Tholia with the Vel’j Tholis.

  Larskene radiated his understanding in steady pulses. So shall it be done.

  The InterLink faded as the Ruling Conclave withdrew to its private environs at the Lattice’s apex. Larskene’s mind-line receded along its thought-path, out of the Warrior Castemoot, back into the sanctum of his own being. Before he powered down the thoughtwave transmitter, he sensed the rising tone of patriotism that brightened the Lattice’s Sub-Links. Elation was mingled with relief, but a new impulse festered in the collective mind-line of the Tholian Assembly.

  For now, the Voice was silent.

  But many voices from across the breadth of the Tholian Assembly now were calling for a war to keep it that way.

  10

  “Mr. Pennington,” Reyes had said over the comm, after waking the young reporter from a sound sleep, “if you want a major news story, get to my office. Now.”

  For three months Pennington had been trying to secure a face-to-face interview with the commodore, to no avail. Now that an opportunity had presented itself, he had sprinted from his apartment half-dressed and barely finished pulling himself together by the time he stepped out of the turbolift into the ops center. A tableau of grim faces had put him on notice that the news which awaited him was not likely to be pleasant. Reyes’s tight-lipped grimace confirmed it.

  He settled into a seat in front of the commodore’s desk. His interview recorder, tucked discreetly in his palm, was running. Not wanting to press his luck, he asked no questions.

  Reyes didn’t look up at him. The older man stared down at a printed report in his hand, which trembled ever so slightly. Teeth clenched lockjaw-tight, he said, “The Federation starship Bombay was destroyed with all hands in the line of duty yesterday at 1746 hours, station time.”

  Pennington stared at him, silent with shock.

  There were dozens of questions that he knew he should be asking, but suddenly he couldn’t think of them. All his thoughts logjammed on her name: Oriana.

  One horrific scenario after another played out in the theater of his imagination. Accident? Sabotage? Ambush? As he fought to rein in the mad flurry of half-formed notions running circles in his mind, his journalistic training reasserted itself. “How?”

  “That’s unclear at the moment,” Reyes said. Pennington waited for him to elaborate, but the man had said his piece.

  “But you have a hypothesis as to what happened?”

  “I have orders to investigate.”

  “Where was she lost?”

  “That’s classified.”

  Pennington saw where this was going. “Her assignment?”

  “Classified,” Reyes said, his tone regretful.

  “Can you at least get me a crew roster?”

  Reyes shook his head. “Not until the families are notified, you know that.”

  “Some scoop,” Pennington said, with more bitterness than he had intended. “One of our ships is missing, and so are the details.” He pushed his chair back, stood, and switched off the recorder in his hand.

  “This was a courtesy, Mr. Pennington,” Reyes said. “In an hour I’ll be making a general announcement. When I do, you can bet every comm line off this station will be jammed with traffic for the next day. If you want to file this story while it’s still yours, I suggest you get a move on.”

  “Thanks.” Pennington walked out and made it most of the way through ops before his false angry glare faltered, threatening to reveal the tears that were welling in his eyes.

  He was deeply thankful to reach the turbolift alone. As soon as it had dropped below the upper decks into the sparsely occupied and heavily insulated core section, he halted its descent and let himself sink down to the floor as his sorrow poured out of him. Heaving sobs clogged his sinuses, forcing him to gasp raggedly for air. Tormented wails erupted from deep within him, one after another, for minutes that felt endless.

  When, at last, he had exhausted his body’s reservoir of tears and rage, he remained seated on the floor of the turbolift, his head atop his knees, his grief-reddened eyes hidden behind his hands. Memories of Oriana’s hair, her laugh, her accent…they called out to him from the cenotaph of his memories, reminding him that every passing day for the rest of his life would carry him farther from her touch.

  A voice from the intercom intruded on his grief.

  “Turbolift three-fifteen-alpha passenger, this is the ops center. Are you all right?”

  Pennington was glad the person on the other end could only hear him. “Yes,” he said. “I’m fine.”

  “You’ve been stopped for nine minutes. Are you lost?”

  “No.” He pulled himself back to his feet and gripped the turbolift throttle. “I’m fine, thank you.” Twisting the throttle, he resumed his descent.

  “Because if you need directions—”

  “Bugger off,” Pennington said, ending the conversation.

  Thirty seconds later he exited the turbolift and plodded across the empty nighttime park toward his residence tower in Stars Landing. He felt unbearably heavy, too weighty to move, too slow and freighted with despair to continue taking step after step. But he also felt insubstantial, an echo of his former self, a half-faded copy of the man he’d been only minutes earlier, reduced to a lonely pantomime of the life he’d taken for granted.

  Time passed in chunks, pieces of it eluding his memory.

  He drifted into his apartment, which looked like the heartless gray confines of a prison cell.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, he wondered how he’d got there from the door without walking the spa
ce between.

  Standing in the lukewarm spray of the shower, he recalled the bed but not his rising; remembered the gaunt stare of his own visage in the bathroom mirror but not turning on the water.

  Reading the words he’d just sent to his editor, he couldn’t recollect having written them. But there they were:

  On stardate 1321.6, the Federation starship Bombay was reported lost with all hands while on a classified mission in the Taurus Reach. The Bombay, under the command of Captain Hallie Gannon, had been assigned to permanent duty at Starbase 47, under the oversight of Commodore Diego Reyes.

  A complete roster of the Bombay’s crew is being withheld pending Starfleet’s official notification of their families. The crew of the Bombay, a Miranda-class starship, is estimated to have numbered roughly 220 personnel.

  As of this writing, the specific cause of the Bombay’s destruction has not been made public.

  Pennington grew angrier each time he read it. Oriana’s gone and no one will say how, or where, or who, or why. What the hell is Starfleet hiding? In Pennington’s opinion, the only thing that Starfleet guarded more jealously than its secrets was its pride. Could it have been crew error? Or did Reyes send them on a suicide mission without telling them?

  The speculation was enough to make him insane with rage. Someone knows, he told himself. Somebody is going to talk, sooner or later. And when they do, I’m going to make certain the truth gets out…. I owe her that much.

  Looking around his apartment, he found it difficult to believe that only a few days ago she had been here, or that those few passionate hours had slipped by in such a blur. Then he noticed her small overnight bag still resting on the chair beside his dresser. In the frenzy of activity that had followed the revocation of the Bombay crew’s shore leave, her friend had never come by to pick it up. His eyes scanned the room, noticing tiny traces of Oriana’s past presence everywhere he looked. A decorative hairpin on his nightstand. Bottles of her exotic shampoo and conditioner on his bathroom vanity. One of her earrings on his dresser—which itself had at least one drawer full of her civilian clothes. Strands of her hair in the bedsheets, in the shower stall, on the carpet, on his shirt.

  Oh, dear God—if Lora sees this….

  Pennington raced to his closet and threw things aside until he found his old duffel bag. He went one square meter at a time, policing up every tiny item that could be linked to Oriana. It all went into the duffel bag, hurled unceremoniously into canvas oblivion. Using the handheld vacuum, he collected up almost all the hair, but he stopped when he got to the bedsheets. Removing the hair would be one thing; washing out the other evidence was a dicier proposition. Better to dispose of them, he decided, and stuffed the whole lot, pillowcases and all, into the duffel.

  When he was done, he resisted his bitter pangs of guilt.

  Rank sentimentalism, he chastised himself. That’s all it is. It’s just a bag of junk. It’s not her.

  Logic was no match for his mourning heart, still grappling with the utter finality of Oriana’s death. His rational mind knew the collection of clothes and toiletries and knickknacks was nothing more than a discreet conglomeration of random items. He knew they had no intrinsic meaning. Peering down into the bag, however, he felt like he was clinging to his last shards of her, the scattered fragments of remembrance. I know I have to throw it away. But how can I? Would she have done that to me?

  He wondered what trinkets and baubles and mementos Oriana had kept of him. Luckily for her, all those miscellaneous bits of incrimination had been lost along with the Bombay—

  Oh, bloody hell. He winced as he remembered what she had said to him about her overnight bag, before she left his arms for the last time: “My friend Katrina will come by later and take it down to my storage locker.”

  The storage locker! She could have anything in there! His mind pinwheeled through worst-case scenarios, all of which had one fact in common: As soon as Oriana’s death became official, every last item in her storage locker would be released…

  …to her husband.

  Pennington cinched shut the duffel full of Oriana’s effects and left his apartment, running to the quartermaster’s office.

  Kirk rehearsed all the different things he might say, weighed the merits of all the potential opening conversational gambits he might employ. None of them felt right. There’s just no good way to say something like this, he lamented.

  News of the Bombay’s destruction had reached him less than ten minutes earlier, courtesy of a private comm from Vanguard’s commanding officer. The message had awoken Kirk from a deep sleep. Even to the captain’s dream-fogged eyes, Reyes had looked stricken, as if someone had bled him pale.

  Without preamble, he’d said to Kirk, “The Starship Bombay was destroyed just over eleven hours ago.” The commodore had swallowed hard, apparently strained by the effort of keeping his emotions in check. “One of your officers had family on the Bombay,” he’d continued. “Lieutenant Oriana D’Amato, helm officer, was married to your senior geologist, Lieutenant Robert D’Amato.”

  Kirk had thanked Reyes for alerting him before disseminating the news stationwide. Standing in front of the door to D’Amato’s quarters, he no longer felt thankful. He dreaded breaking this kind of news. During his years coming up through the ranks, he had dealt more than once with the trauma of losing personnel under his command. His first year in the captain’s chair, aboard the Enterprise, had only increased that burden. Recording condolences for the families of people like Lee Kelso, or Elizabeth Dehner, or Gary Mitchell, had proved emotionally taxing in the extreme. Until now, however, he’d at least had the buffer of time and distance, and of speaking to people who were, essentially, strangers.

  Tonight he would have to look one of his own crewmen in the eye and be the bearer of tragic news. Then he would have to endure the aftermath, whatever it turned out to be. Drawing a deep breath, he calmed himself. This is my responsibility, he reminded himself. D’Amato is one of my crew. If he has to hear this, it should be from me.

  He pressed the door buzzer. And he waited.

  Several seconds later the door hissed open, revealing the barefoot D’Amato. His dark blue robe hung open, showing his bare chest and loose, gray pajama pants. Squinting at the light, he sounded as groggy as he looked. “Captain?”

  “Mr. D’Amato. Sorry to wake you.”

  “That’s all right, sir. What can I do for you?”

  Gesturing through the door, Kirk said, “May I come in?”

  D’Amato stepped aside and ushered the captain in. “Of course, sir. My apologies.”

  “No need.” Kirk walked in and stopped in front of a low, padded chair, which faced another one just like it, against the wall on the other side of a low table. As the door closed, D’Amato faded up the lights. Moving to the closer of the two seats, Kirk motioned to D’Amato to take the other one.

  With an understandable degree of apprehension, D’Amato settled into the chair. “What brings you here, Captain?”

  Words abandoned Kirk for a moment, then he recovered his composure. “I have some bad news,” he said. “In a few minutes, Vanguard’s CO will be making an announcement, but I wanted you to hear this from me.” He paused, drew a small breath, then continued. “Roughly eleven hours ago, your wife’s ship, the Bombay, was destroyed.”

  D’Amato’s face looked frozen. He didn’t blink, he seemed barely even to be breathing. Then his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed once, slowly and deliberately. “Lifeboats?”

  “They would have radioed for help,” Kirk said.

  Dismay began to alter D’Amato’s features. His brow lifted into a steady crease of alarm, and his eyes grew wide. The tide of his breathing became rapid and shallow, and within seconds he was gasping weakly through his mouth, which drooped open. Turning his head finally enabled him to break eye contact with Kirk. “Was there a planet? Maybe they…maybe they beamed down.”

  “They were bringing supplies to a research outpost. If they were going t
o beam down, that’s where they’d have gone.” Before D’Amato could latch on to this fragment of hope, Kirk added, “But Vanguard’s lost contact with the outpost, too.” D’Amato covered his eyes with one hand. See no evil, Kirk thought. If only it were that easy. “Is there anyone back home you want me to contact for you?”

  Still hiding his eyes, D’Amato shook his head. Inhaling sharply through his gritted teeth left him unable to speak.

  Kirk wondered why they didn’t teach classes at the Academy about situations like this. They teach us all about machines and tactics and regulations, he ruminated. Would it have hurt to teach us how to talk to people? He leaned forward. “Whatever you need, just ask. Leave of absence, a transfer planetside—”

  “I put in for a transfer last month,” D’Amato said, his voice choking. He lowered his hand from his eyes. “So did Oriana. Home was going to be wherever we ended up.” Despondently eyeing his quarters, he added, “Not much point leaving now, I guess…. One empty place is pretty much the same as another.”

  Nodding, Kirk thought of the latest empty space in his own life, the one where his best friend Gary Mitchell used to be.

  “I’m sorry, Robert,” Kirk said. “Sorry that there’s nothing I can say to make this hurt any less, or stop hurting any sooner…if it ever does. I can’t even say that I know what you’re going through, because I don’t. But as your captain, and as a friend, I’ll be available if you need me, and I’ll do whatever I can to help you get through this. I promise.”

  The gesture of support seemed to draw an even more powerful wave of grief out of D’Amato. As valiantly as he struggled to hang on to his dignity, streams of tears crossed one another’s paths as they meandered down his face. “Thanks, Captain.”

  Kirk reached across the table and offered D’Amato his hand. The geologist reciprocated, and Kirk clasped his hand firmly around D’Amato’s, as if they were about to arm-wrestle above the table. “It’s going to be okay,” Kirk said. “Maybe not any day soon, but someday.”

  “I know that’s true. But it doesn’t feel true.”