Star Trek: Vanguard: Storming Heaven (16 page)

Another shadow dulled the perfection of the SubLink. Tarskene opened his mind-line and sought out the lone voice of discontent. He was surprised to find its source was his first officer, Kezthene [The Gray]. In their many cycles of service together, she had never before challenged one of his priority directives. Crimson and violet tainted Tarskene’s thought-colors, revealing his irritation with his second-in-command. He sequestered her thoughts with his inside a private SubLink so that their conflict would not agitate the rest of the crew.
Why do you resist unity?

The first officer’s thoughts coruscated with confusion.
We have insufficient information to justify this action,
she protested.
The Orion’s intelligence specified neither the nature of her discovery nor what use it might be to the Federation. A military response seems premature
.

Irrelevant!
Tarskene’s fury turned his thoughts black.
We have our orders
.

Kezthene summoned the image from the sensing units.
The platforms orbiting the pulsar represent an unknown technology. They should be studied, not destroyed
.

He flooded her mind with facets of his memory. Heated debates among the members of the Elite Political Caste on Tholia. Moments of conflict against the Klingon and Federation interlopers. Worlds shattered, turned into clouds of debris. The message of his psionic montage was clear: this mission’s importance was more than strategic, it was existential.
My directive from the Ruling Conclave is to destroy the source of those artifacts before Starfleet acquires any more of them. Their meddling with the Old Ones must be brought to an end
.

Defiant hues coursed through Kezthene’s mind-line.
What if the Federation is using the artifacts as weapons against the Shedai? Should we not consider doing the same? We could at least try to capture one of the Tkon devices for analysis
.

Absolutely not,
Tarskene fumed.
Those objects were made to imprison the Shedai, but no trap can hold the Old Ones forever. Such a risk must never be permitted on a Tholian world. For the good of the Great Castemoot, we must destroy those objects before the Federation’s deluded scientists make the mistake of using them
. Infusing his mind-line with the brilliant luminance of the command caste, he asserted his absolute authority.
Will you join the crew in harmony?

Kezthene’s aura flickered briefly, telegraphing her uncertainty, but then her mind-line resolved into a steady pale hue of compliance.
I will attune myself with the others
.

Tarskene released her from the private SubLink, and she was true to her pledge. She calmed her thought-colors and synchronized them with his own. Together they guided the ship’s communal thoughtspace to a uniform golden radiance. Firm and resolute, they were of one mind, one purpose. Within moments their harmony spread to the other ships of the fleet, and then Tarskene knew they all were ready to enact the will of the Ruling Conclave.

Lostrene quelled a pulsing alert from the sensing units.
The
Starfleet vessel is receiving a transmission from the starbase,
she advised.
I am unable to decrypt it
.

It is of no consequence,
Tarskene assured her, and the others as well.
Charge all weapons to maximum, and let me know the moment we reach optimal firing distance from the target
.

Khatami reeled in dismay from the news Admiral Nogura had just delivered to her over the encrypted subspace channel. “Are you saying the
Sagittarius
is on . . . whatever that thing is?”

“That is exactly what I am telling you,”
the gravel-voiced flag officer said, his head magnified to epic proportions on the
Endeavour
’s bridge viewscreen.
“Their mission to Eremar is of vital importance, and we need you to escort them to safety.”

Lieutenant Thorsen looked back from the forward console at Khatami. His gloomy mood told Khatami the situation hadn’t improved in the last thirty seconds. “That’s going to be difficult,” Khatami said. “All twelve Tholian ships are locking their weapons on the statite inside the pulsar’s emission axis. There’s no telling what’ll happen when they open fire.”

Nogura’s fierce presence seemed to jump through the screen.
“You need to make them hold their fire until the
Sagittarius
is clear. After that, the Tholians can do as they like.”

“We’re not exactly in a position to dictate terms, and the Tholians don’t seem interested in talking, but I’ll do what I can. Khatami out.” She glanced at Estrada and made a throat-slashing gesture with her thumb. He took the cue and terminated the comm channel to Vanguard. “Yellow Alert! Hector, find a way to punch through the pulsar’s interference and get a warning to the
Sagittarius
.” Swiveling her chair to the right, she said to Stano, “Hail the Tholian fleet commander again. Tell him we’re
demanding
a parley.”

Tense seconds bled away while Estrada and Stano worked at adjacent consoles, trying to raise anyone involved in this fiasco on a comm channel. On the main viewscreen, the Tholian fleet fanned out into a formation optimized for group bombardment of
the underside of the statite upon which sat the
Sagittarius,
unaware of and unprepared for the Tholians’ impending assault. Obeying a gut instinct that told her this situation was likely to degenerate quickly, Khatami shot another look at Thorsen. “Charge shields, arm phasers, and load all torpedo bays.”

He checked his readouts as he worked. “Ninety seconds to weapons range.”

Khatami looked back in hope at Estrada, who shook his head.

Then Stano turned, one hand cupped over the Feinberger transceiver in her ear, and nodded. “I have the Tholian fleet commander.”

“On-screen,” Khatami said. The ring of Tholian warships on the viewscreen blinked to a fiery red haze, within which she discerned the faint outline of a Tholian. The multilimbed, crystalline arthropod gesticulated with his forelimbs and screeched like a drill bit grinding against neutronium. The universal translator rendered the noise into Federation Standard on a quarter-second delay.
“What is the meaning of this intrusion?”
It was a testament to the translator’s superb programming that it preserved the tonal quality of the Tholian’s outrage.

“Tholian fleet commander, this is Captain Atish Khatami, commanding the Federation starship
Endeavour
. We request that all vessels in your fleet power down their weapons so that we may carry out a rescue operation.” It was an off-the-cuff lie, one for which she hadn’t rehearsed her bridge crew. She hoped they would be able to improvise and keep up. “Another Federation vessel has crashed on the statite your fleet is targeting, and we have orders to render immediate aid to that vessel and its crew.”

“Captain Khatami,”
said the radiant, nearly transparent creature on the screen,
“I am Commander Tarskene of the
Toj’k Tholis.
What is that ship doing on the statite?”

“They were conducting a spectral survey of the pulsar when they experienced a malfunction in their navigational system.”

Tarskene slowly rubbed his forelimbs together. It struck Khatami as a cogitative gesture. Then he lurched forward and loomed large on the screen.
“I do not believe you, Captain. If your lost
vessel had successfully transmitted a distress signal, we, too, would have received it. But given the disruption the pulsar causes to subspace signals—especially within its emission field—I think it is extremely unlikely you have had any contact with a vessel on the statite. That leads me to two possible conclusions. First: There is a vessel on the statite, and you know about it because you are an accomplice to whatever covert mission led it there. Second: There is no vessel on the statite, and you are attempting to delay the completion of our assignment so that you may gain access to the statite. In either case, our course is clear: We proceed as ordered.”

Khatami sprang from her chair and strode toward the view-screen, mimicking the Tholian’s aggressive posturing. “Commander Tarskene, I assure you, there is a Starfleet vessel stranded on that statite. In the interest of interstellar amity, I am begging you to order your fleet to stand down until we have completed our rescue operation.”

“Your petition is refused. If there is a Starfleet vessel on that statite, its destruction will be its just penalty for trespassing. Now I will advise you to stand down and withdraw, Captain. If you attempt to interfere in our mission, your ship will be destroyed.”

The transmission ended, and the viewscreen reverted to the image of the dartlike Tholian ships deployed in a ring, their tapered bows all aimed at the statite. Khatami shot a look at Stano, who said, “They’ve closed the channel, Captain.”

“Hector! Any luck hailing the
Sagittarius
?”

“Negative, Captain. I still can’t break through the pulsar’s interference.”

Her pulse throbbing in her temples and clenched fists, Khatami felt the situation spiraling out of control. Her ship was outnumbered twelve to one, which made any solution predicated on the use of force perilous at best. Complicating the matter was the contentious political situation between the Federation and the Tholian Assembly; any act of overt aggression could instigate a full-scale war between the two powers. But if she stood by and
did nothing, the
Sagittarius
would be destroyed, along with its crew and whatever they had been sent to find. Worse, she would have to live with knowing she had been a witness to mass murder, and had done nothing to stop it.

If only I had another minute,
she realized.
We could jump into the statite’s shadow and have a chance of hailing the
Sagittarius
. But what if they aren’t ready to leave? How would we buy them more time? How do we convince Tarskene not to—

Before she could finish weighing her options, the Tholian fleet opened fire.

Easy does it,
Terrell cautioned himself as he lowered a Tkon crystal into the padded packing crate mounted on the back of his rover, Ziggy. Detaching the crystals from their spokes inside “the Pit,” as Chief Ilucci had nicknamed it, and then carrying them up to the rovers wasn’t strenuous work, but it was slow and tedious, and for once Terrell was glad that even on a tiny ship like the
Sagittarius,
rank still had its occasional privileges. As the designated driver for Ziggy, he got to break the monotony by making regular runs back to the
Sagittarius
to drop off each filled container and replace it with an empty one. He was pleased to see that Ziggy’s latest crate was almost topped off.

Through the faceplates of their environmental suits, he had observed the anxiety etched on the crew’s faces. None of them liked visiting the Pit, and a few of them—Ilucci, zh’Firro, and Threx—had said outright that it made them nervous. If the sinister aura that infused the alien arena was having any ill effect on Sorak or Razka, however, they were masking it expertly.

Razka and Threx emerged from the gap in the Pit’s outer wall. Each of them clutched a single Tkon artifact in their gloved hands. The Saurian scout stowed his fragile cargo inside the container on Ziggy’s rear flatbed, then the hulking Denobulan did the same. As they trudged back inside, Lieutenants Theriault and zh’Firro passed them, cautiously ferrying two more artifacts to the rover.

A glance toward the
Sagittarius
confirmed that Ilucci was on his way back in Roxy, having completed the delivery of another fully packed crate of artifacts to the ship’s cargo hold. With an empty crate secured to Roxy’s flatbed and only Ilucci aboard, the tough little rover sped and bounced across the barren waste that separated the ship from the Pit. Terrell thought the bleak vista reminiscent of a salt flat, minus the warmth and homey charm.

Theriault and zh’Firro packed away their latest contributions to Ziggy’s hold, and Terrell made two more check marks on his data slate. That brought the total number of recovered artifacts to nearly fifty-five hundred. They had been working around the clock, six-person teams operating in four-hour shifts, for three days, yet they had harvested fewer than half the artifacts they’d found inside the Pit. The work would have gone faster had they been able to drive the rovers all the way down to the machine, and faster still had they been able to use the transporter, but since neither option was available, they had done the best they could.

While he watched Ilucci pull up and park Roxy, Terrell pondered ways to enable his people to haul more than one artifact at a time out of the Pit. Backpacks were a bit too cumbersome to add to their environmental suits, and trying to carry the orbs one-handed was too risky—they’d already dropped and damaged one due to careless handling. Terrell wondered if it might be practical to attach woven-net pouches to the ends of poles they could carry across their shoulders, or perhaps attach up to four pouches to a pole that would be carried by two people, thereby doubling their productivity. He was about to ask Ilucci if he could jury-rig one when the ground under their feet lurched violently, knocking both men off their feet.

Sprawled beside Terrell, Ilucci looked appropriately alarmed.
“What the hell is that?”

“Feels like an earthquake,” Terrell said, even though the notion was ludicrous. The statite was an artificial construct; it couldn’t be geologically active. Could it?

Another jarring vibration rocked the statite, and the two rovers lurched several centimeters off the ground, as did Ilucci and
Terrell. The surface continued to shake and heave as the rest of the landing party scrambled empty-handed out of the Pit. Terrell looked up, fearful that one of the inward-curving towers above the Pit might have started to collapse, but the alien arena seemed unaffected by the tremors. The stars above, however, began to shift . . . and then he realized the stars weren’t moving—the statite was. If it turned far enough to expose the landing party to the full force of the pulsar’s fury, they would all die instantly.