by David Mack
“May I be of aid or comfort, T’Prynn?”
“No, Spock. This affliction is mine alone. But I thank you for your kind offer.”
He held up his hand in the Vulcan salute.
“Live long and prosper, T’Prynn.”
She stood and returned the salute.
“Peace and long life, Spock.”
She watched him leave, then she reached for her tea.
The bones of my hand splinter beneath Sten’s heel.
The teacup fell from her hand and smashed on the floor.
T’Prynn walked back onstage, sat down at the piano, and lifted the cover from the keys.
Sten’s katra raged inside her. Submit!
She raised her hands, then brought them down for a booming, low-C crescendo. Never!
“Ready to clear moorings, Captain,” Leslie said.
“Thank you, Mr. Leslie,” Kirk said. “Initiate departure sequence.”
“Vanguard Control,” Leslie said. “Enterprise is ready to depart spacedock.”
“Confirmed, Enterprise. We’ll lead you out. Opening bay doors. Stand by.”
Though Kirk could not pinpoint any one detail or other that made the difference, he could tell his ship was back in prime condition just by the way it felt and sounded around him. The steady, low vibrato of the impulse engines in the deck, the fine-tuned pitch of systems operating in harmony…the Enterprise was herself again, thanks to hours of labor by Scotty, his engineers, and the Vanguard spacedock team.
In a matter of weeks the Enterprise and her crew would be home, back in the heart of the Federation. From there, the rest of the galaxy lay open before them, ripe for exploration and discovery. Worlds and civilizations unmet by humanity called to Kirk like a siren’s song; he was old enough now to have put aside childish desires, but he remained young enough at heart to smile with the excitement of facing the new and unknown.
“Enterprise, you are clearing spacedock doors. Stand by for helm control in thirty seconds.”
On the main viewer, the docking clamps and airlock port of Vanguard’s core slowly receded as the Enterprise was guided out of spacedock by Vanguard’s navigational system. Kirk settled into his chair and checked a refueling report his yeoman handed to him. He had just finished and handed it back when the turbolift door opened, and Spock stepped onto the bridge. The first officer moved directly to Kirk’s side.
“Welcome back, Mr. Spock,” Kirk said. “We almost left without you.” In a more confidential tone, he added, “Did you finish your business on Vanguard?”
“Not entirely,” Spock said. “Unfortunately, there is nothing more that I can do at this time.”
“I see,” Kirk said.
On the main viewer, the upper hull of Vanguard loomed large as Enterprise cleared the spacedock doors.
“Enterprise, we’re releasing helm control now. The lane is clear and you are free to navigate…. Godspeed, Enterprise. Vanguard out.”
“Helm control confirmed,” Leslie said. “Course, Captain?”
Kirk nodded at the screen. “Earth, Mr. Leslie. Warp six.”
“Aye, sir.”
As Vanguard shrank into the distance and the Enterprise turned toward the curtain of stars, Kirk looked at Spock. “I’m sorry you didn’t find what you were looking for, but for what it’s worth, I think we’ll be back here again.”
“Agreed,” Spock said, as the Enterprise jumped to warp.
Bundled in a bulky maroon jacket and thick gloves, Ensign Stephen Klisiewicz, science officer of the Starship Endeavour, could barely see the tricorder in his hand, never mind work its small controls. His parka hood was cinched tight to keep his ears warm, but that precaution, coupled with the shrieking arctic wind, made it almost impossible to hear the device’s high-pitched oscillations as it scanned the surrounding terrain.
Dimly lit by the light of a white-dwarf sun, the rest of the landing party had fanned out and moved away from the towering glacier of dark-blue ice that held Klisiewicz’s attention. Getting a clear reading from inside the frozen mass was proving troublesome, and he couldn’t tell whether the problem was trace elements in the water, radioactive interference from the bedrock beneath it, or a complete malfunction of his tricorder.
Commander Atish Khatami, the Endeavor’s first officer, tromped toward him, the wide ovals of her snowshoes leaving behind distinctive waffle-tread prints in the formerly pristine snow. Shrouded in cold-weather gear, she looked identical right now to the rest of the landing party, except for the white rank insignia that circled the cuffs of her jacket sleeves. “Klisiewicz,” she said. “We’re not reading anything over here. I think we should beam over to the next survey point.”
“Can I have another minute, Commander? I might have something, if I can just break through the interference.”
“Make it quick,” Khatami said. She unclipped her communicator from the broad utility belt around her waist. It flipped open with a distinctive triple chirp. Adjusting its gain, she spoke into it, “Khatami to Endeavour.”
Captain Zhao Sheng answered. “Endeavour here. Go ahead.”
“Our sweep’s mostly finished; we’re waiting on Klisiewicz to finish scanning the galaxy’s largest ice cube. Anything new and exciting up there?”
“Actually, yes,” Zhao said. “The Sagittarius just reported that its long-range sensors picked up subspace signal traffic inside the Taurus Reach. Looks like we might have some first-contact missions ahead of us.”
Klisiewicz and Khatami turned toward each other. Even though neither one could see the other’s face under the breathing masks and goggles, Klisiewicz was certain they were both smiling the same goofy grin. First contact! That’s the whole reason we’re here!
“That’s great news, sir,” Khatami said.
“I agree,” Zhao said. “And with the Exeter relieving us on border patrol, I’d like to get back to making those missions happen. How long until your survey’s done?”
Khatami and the rest of the landing party—which consisted of chief engineer Bersh glov Mog; Ensign Bonnie Malmat, senior geologist; and security guards Jeanne La Sala and Paul McGibbon—gathered around Ensign Klisiewicz. Noting the general mood of impatience pressing in on him, he shouted over the wind, “Hang on, I’ve got an idea.” On a hunch, he resorted to a simpler scanning protocol and made another attempt to pierce the interference. Like a Rorschach blot, an image appeared on his tricorder screen.
“Commander,” he said. “You’d better look at this.”
The first officer carefully sidled up to him, her snowshoes overlapping his own in an awkward jumble. He shifted his posture to let her look at his tricorder display. She stared at it for several moments, but he knew not to interrupt her chain of thought. Khatami was one of the smartest officers Klisiewicz had ever met; he knew that if she had any questions, she’d ask.
“Question,” she said. “Is that the same configuration?”
“Affirmative,” he said. “But bigger. A lot bigger.”
“How far down is it?”
“Almost a hundred meters,” Klisiewicz said.
Khatami waved over Malmat and showed her the tricorder data. “Does that look like a natural formation to you?”
Craning her neck and leaning forward to see the tricorder, Malmat said, “No. Too symmetrical. It’s definitely synthetic, Commander.”
The entire landing party stared up at the sapphire-tinted glacier as if it were about to lash out at them. Above it, the silvery sky was streaked with bruised pink clouds that were dimming with the encroaching dusk. Wind yowled furiously around the Starfleet team, whipping snow-devils into frenzied dances. Khatami turned toward Mog. “How long to excavate it?”
Folding his arms, the Tellarite chief engineer gave the glacier a long look, then said, “About thirty seconds.”
Panic was not a normal reaction for Klisiewicz, but he knew right away what his friend was about to propose. “No! It’s too—”
“Get behind that bluff,” Mog said, then
flipped open his communicator. “Mog to Endeavour. Arm phaser banks one and two and stand by to receive my firing solution.”
Khatami and the rest of the group were already jogging in comical snowshoed strides toward the bluff while Mog and Klisiewicz bickered at the base of the glacier. “Mog, don’t be crazy! You could damage it! What if it has defenses? What if—”
“Relax, Steve,” Mog said. “I know what I’m doing.”
“At least use the tricorder to calculate the—”
“Don’t need it.” He lifted his goggles and squinted at the glacier; then he lowered his breathing mask and grinned at Klisiewicz. “Take cover. I’ll be right behind you.”
Convinced that logic wasn’t going to win the day with the headstrong Tellarite, Klisiewicz scrambled across the snow plain toward the rocky bluff where the rest of the landing party had already ducked and covered. Watching his enormous snowshoes flopping clumsily with each step, he felt like a sprinting circus clown.
A few meters shy of the bluff, Mog ran past him. “Step it up, kid, or you’ll get a tan you’ll never forget!”
They leaped together over the bluff into the protective shadows on the far side. Half a breath later, the wind was outscreamed by the whine of a phaser strike as bright as the dawn.
Klisiewicz shut his eyes and covered his ears until it was over. It seemed to him like a lot longer than thirty seconds. Finally, the screeching of the phasers ceased, leaving only the banshee moan of a freezing gale.
Peeking over the edge of the bluff, Khatami muttered something in Farsi that the wind drowned out. In staggered motions, the landing party got to its feet and looked out toward where the glacier had been only seconds before.
Some of the ice that had been vaporized was flurrying back down around the landing party as snow. Most of it, however, had escaped into the atmosphere as heated gas and likely would not recondense for several hours. A relatively small amount had been left behind as liquid water that pooled in the fresh, three-hundred-meter-deep crater in the ground. The phasers had bored through the ice and scoured down to bare stone, revealing a massive rock basin.
Dominating that basin was a structure unlike anything else Klisiewicz had ever seen. Composed of a gleaming black substance that resembled both glass and stone, its overall affect was insectoid and sinister. The largest component was an open dome. It consisted of four massive legs, evenly spaced, broad and thick at their bases and tapering at their apexes, which were joined by a sturdy disk-shaped structure. The disk itself formed the apex of a truncated, conical claw that was suspended above its mirror image, which was recessed into a broad, sloping circular dais half the circumference of the open dome. Biomechanical tubing and components snaked like varicose veins across the structure’s every surface. It was several hundred meters in diameter, more than two hundred meters tall, and even from more than a hundred meters away it radiated a tangible aura of power.
Klisiewicz activated his tricorder and pointed it into the basin. “I’m getting bioreadings in the meltwater, Commander.”
“Probably just bacteria released by the thermal effects,” Khatami said.
“Maybe,” Klisiewicz said. Removing the sample rod from his tricorder, he kneeled down, tapped through the crust of ice that was swiftly knitting itself across a freshly melted puddle near the crater’s edge, and scooped up a few droplets of water. Inserting the rod back into the tricorder, he ran a detailed chemical analysis. The results confirmed his suspicions. He offered the tricorder to Khatami. “Recognize it?”
She didn’t have to answer. Her silence as she gave him back the tricorder was confirmation enough that she knew the Taurus Meta-Genome when she saw it. She flipped open her communicator. “Khatami to Endeavour.”
“Go ahead,” Captain Zhao said.
“Captain, we…Ensign Klisiewicz has made a remarkable discovery, sir. He’s found an alien structure in need of further analysis, and…life signs, sir.”
“What kind of life signs, Khatami?”
“Type-V,” she said, using the code for the meta-genome.
After a brief delay, Zhao said, “Acknowledged. Prepare to beam up. We’ll notify Vanguard to send in the specialists…. And tell Klisiewicz I said ‘nice work.’ Zhao out.”
Staring down into the basin, Klisiewicz shook with the raw thrill of discovery. The tip from Xiong had been a long shot, but it had paid off. Unlike the Ravanar artifact, this one appeared to be intact. There was no telling what clues it might yield in Starfleet’s search for the secrets of its creation.
More important, Klisiewicz knew, finding another sample of the meta-genome on a world that also housed another of these majestic machines was unlikely to be a coincidence. Klisiewicz was certain that when they compared notes, Xiong would agree that the meta-genome and the massive artifacts must somehow be connected. Klisiewicz didn’t know yet what that connection might be, but looking down at the glistening obsidian structure below, he was certain that he had just taken the first step toward deciphering a map written on the stars.
A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Here we come.
Epilogue
Scorching wind ripped across a blackened plain on Ravanar IV. Gargantuan stratocumulus mountains of dust, blasted high into the atmosphere, blotted out the starlight, turning the night into a pitch-black inferno of howling sandstorms.
The Shedai Wanderer moved through the lightless maelstrom, guided by memories that refused to die. There was life here, she recollected. Brief…fragile…but it was here.
It was too soon, she knew, for this world to have run its course. It should have had billions of years left to it. The Shedai would not have chosen it otherwise. Someone laid waste to this orb with malicious intent. Arriving at the sandswept ruins of the Conduit, she intuited who was to blame for this horror.
Once more they wreak their havoc upon us.
Eons had passed in blessed silence. Left to bury themselves in their own ashes, most of the Shedai had been content to let the past claim them, satisfied to slumber until time unmade them with the slow inevitability of entropy. A few who could not abandon their legions of helpless “flickers of life” to the arbitrary designs of the universe had remained awake these many millennia, perhaps entertaining some forlorn hope of finding new hosts for the Conduits, and of elevating the Shedai once more to their past glory.
Until the song of the Conduit roused her a day-moment ago, the Shedai Wanderer had given up such ambitions; she had been embraced by the blissful darkness of oblivion. Wrenching herself back into the light, the heat, the torment of mere being, was an indignity that stoked her fury. The song of the Conduit had brought her up from the bedrock, out of the cold sanctuary of her grave, into this fiery desert wrought by fear and hatred.
She picked through needle-like fragments of the Conduit’s explosively shattered black stoneglass. Our legacy has become a target. The Wanderer cast her fury upward, toward the obscured heavens, imagining who would be so brazen as to risk awakening the wrath of the Shedai. Only a great power would dare such a reprisal.
She clutched the razor-sharp black shard, paying it no heed as it sliced through her flesh; she knew the wound would heal in moments.
They will come for us next, she concluded.
I must awaken the others.
The saga of
STAR TREK VANGUARD
will continue
Guide to Principal Characters
COMMODORE DIEGO REYES
(COMMANDING OFFICER)
A fifty-something human officer of Chilean ancestry, born and raised in the Lunar settlement of New Berlin, Reyes is a rough-hewn but amiable CO, with an appreciation for irony and dark humor. As a thirty-year Starfleet veteran, he’s experienced enough not to be easily surprised, but he’s still intrigued by the unknown and the mysteries of the universe. His command style is smooth and decisive, seldom hesitant, and can come in quick bursts.
Despite his friendly disposition, he maintains more emotional distanc
e from his crew than most Star Trek COs we’ve seen. He hides his strongest feelings, is stoic about pain, and limits his mirth to a lockjawed grin. Part of Reyes’s closed-off manner is the result of his bitter divorce from his ex-wife, Jeanne, which has made it difficult for him to trust anyone or form close relationships. Though he won’t admit it aloud (and maybe not even to himself), he really wishes he had children.
Reyes is one of the four people on the station aware of the secret aspect of the Federation’s mission into the Taurus Reach. The others are T’Prynn, Jetanien, and Xiong.
LIEUTENANT COMMANDER T’PRYNN
(INTELLIGENCE OFFICER)
A relatively young (seventies) Vulcan, T’Prynn keeps a low profile aboard the station, specializing in information gathering and analysis, threat assessment, and, when necessary, covert ops. Her wit is dry, her sarcasm sharp, her voice smoky-sweet. Off duty, T’Prynn sometimes plays piano in the starbase cabaret. In contrast to her cool behavior, her music is passionate and eloquent. Her performances lead some of her associates to wonder if it’s her way of circumventing her people’s strict dictums of logic in order to express her turbulent inner state of mind. Like many other Vulcans, during childhood she was pledged to a mate, Sten. Upon reaching adulthood, she spurned him. Unwilling to release her, Sten invoked the kal-if-fee. But instead of selecting a champion to fight on her behalf, she herself faced Sten in ritual combat and slew him to win her independence. The unexpected consequences of that act have tormented her ever since.
AMBASSADOR JETANIEN
(SENIOR FEDERATION DIPLOMAT)
On permanent assignment to the Federation Embassy on Starbase 47, Jetanien supervises a small staff of envoys, attachés, and aides to deal with the full spectrum of diplomatic issues that come up in the Taurus Reach. Jetanien is a wise and learned statesman with a firm belief in the ideals of the United Federation of Planets, a wry sense of humor, and an appreciation for unpredictable twists of diplomacy. When the need arises, he can be a passionate orator and a tough negotiator. His knowledge of history is detailed and highly nuanced. His role is to expand Federation control in the region through political alliance and expansion of colonial holdings.
