Star Trek: Vanguard: Storming Heaven (21 page)

Khatami’s features tightened. “Putting aside my own feelings about the matter, how will this affect the station’s tactical posture?”

“I’ve ordered the
Akhiel
and the
Buenos Aires
to tighten their patrol routes, but with
Defiant
gone and the
Endeavour
down for maintenance, we’re more vulnerable than ever before. I’d hoped we could count on the
Enterprise
to cover the gap, but Starfleet insists she’s needed elsewhere.” He reclined his chair. “You’ve been out here longer than I have. How long do you think it will take the Klingons and the Tholians to realize we’re on the defensive?”

The captain thought that over for a few seconds. “It depends. From what I’ve read, the Tholians know the
Defiant
is MIA, but the Klingons might not be aware of it yet. From their perspective, it might seem as if the
Defiant
’s been deployed on a long-range recon. It might be useful to set up some fake comm chatter to make the Klingons think the
Defiant
’s still in action.” One side of her mouth pulled into a crooked frown. “Unfortunately, the Tholians already know about the
Defiant,
and they also know just how hard they hit us and the
Sagittarius
. Plus, judging from the size of the armada they have standing by at their border, I think it’s possible they’ve been waiting for a moment like this.”

Nogura’s concerns increased. “If that’s the case, what are they waiting for? They could cross the border any time they wanted. There’s nothing we could do to stop them. Why wait?”

“I have no idea, sir.” She cracked a sardonic smile. “If you’re really that curious, you could hail them via subspace and ask.”

“No, thank you,” Nogura said. “Something tells me I won’t like their answer.”

“That makes two of us, sir.”

Ezekiel Fisher felt like an invisible man as he forded the commotion of business-as-usual inside Docking Bay 92, located
low on the station’s central core, just above the lower docking ring. Forklifts buzzed in and out of the open cargo hold of the civilian transport ship
S.S. Lisbon
. The boxy yellow vehicles filled the docking bay with resounding metallic bangs as each one struck the ramp that led up into the ship. Lifting his eyes to take in the vessel at a glance, Fisher found it sorely wanting by more than one measure. It looked like a fat, ugly fish. The only parts of its gray hull not dulled by a patina of scrapes and dents were those covered by mismatched off-white patches whose welded edges reminded Fisher of scar tissue.

Overamplified music echoed inside the docking bay; at first it sounded like raw noise to Fisher, then he realized that was because he was hearing three different songs at once: one from inside the
Lisbon
’s hold; another from one of the forklifts, giving it a peculiar Doppler-shifted quality as it sped past in one direction or another; and one from atop the ship, where a team of grime-covered mechanics and engineers walked across the dorsal hull, scanning it with microfissure detectors and tagging areas in need of repair. A few dozen men of various species worked around the ship, packing or unpacking cargo containers—that is, when they weren’t dodging the irresponsibly driven forklifts. Fisher had no doubt that Vanguard Hospital would be treating a number of work-related injuries from this crew in the immediate future. He forced that thought from his mind.
That’s not your problem anymore,
he reminded himself.

Navigating the energetic chaos with caution, he slipped through a narrow channel between two tall mountains of stacked cargo containers, following the clamor of voices. As he emerged on the other side, he saw a cluster of people—some in coveralls, others in more formal merchant marine uniforms—surrounding a lean, short-haired woman of Thai heritage. She was in her mid-forties, Fisher guessed, and what she lacked in stature she made up for in intensity. Without the use of a universal translator, she seemed adept at berating each of her people in their native language, whether that was Tellarite, Andorii, Vulcan, or any of a handful of Terran tongues, sometimes switching from one to another
in mid-sentence without missing a syllable. While verbally eviscerating one person who would then slink away in shame, she would also be signing paperwork presented by another and silently dismissing a third, complaint unheard.

Enjoying the show from a discreet distance, Fisher smiled.

I know this music. She must be the captain
.

He waited until she broke free of her gaggle of people with problems, and then he emerged from the gap between the containers to intercept her on the move. “Captain Boonmee?”

She answered without sparing him so much as a look. “Who wants to know?”

“Doctor Ezekiel Fisher, Starfleet.” Boonmee stopped and faced Fisher as he added with his best disarming charm, “Retired.” He offered her his hand, and she shook it quickly.

“Captain Khunying Boonmee.” She resumed walking. “You’ve got one minute.”

He hurried to keep up with her. “I heard from one of your debarking passengers that you might have an open cabin for the return trip to the core systems.”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Boonmee said. “What’s your final destination?”

She sidestepped to avoid a speeding forklift, and Fisher lost half a step in the course of not getting run over. He jogged to catch up to Boonmee and replied between gasps, “Mars.”

“The good news is, we’re actually planning a stop at Mars. The bad news is, the only cabin I have available on this run is our VIP suite.”

“Why is that bad news?”

“I usually put it up for auction. Current bid’s at eleven thousand.” She swatted a yellow-furred Tellarite in black coveralls and let rip a stream of angry Tellarite verbiage. The crewman nodded furiously, then slipped away, grumbling. Boonmee looked back at Fisher. “As I was saying, if you want to put in a bid, you’re welcome to, but I’m guessing eleven grand’s probably a bit steep for someone on a Starfleet pension.”

“I’ll pay you twenty to close the bidding and sell me the berth
right now,” Fisher said. “You can even put me to work if you need a surgeon.”

His offer seemed to amuse her. “We have a sawbones, thanks.” A narrow-eyed, curious stare. “Twenty grand, huh? You must really want to get home.”

“You could say that.”

“Make it twenty-five, and you’ve got a deal.”

Fisher nodded. “Sold.”

The captain grabbed Fisher by his shirt and pulled him clear of another hot-rodding forklift. She screamed a blistering flurry of Andorii profanities at the vehicle’s antennaed blue driver, then made a token effort to brush the wrinkles from Fisher’s shirt. “Sorry about that. One more thing: I hope you’re not in a big hurry to leave. We’re stuck here for at least another three or four weeks, waiting for cargo and passengers coming in from the fringe territories. Can’t leave without ’em, since flying empty is just burning fuel for no good reason.”

“I understand. It’s not a problem. To be honest, yours is the first ship I’ve found in weeks that had an open cabin for the trip home.”

Boonmee smirked. “I wish I’d known that. I’d have charged you more.” She held up open palms. “Just kidding. If you’re ready to book the cabin, we can head inside and find my XO.”

“Sounds great,” Fisher said, gesturing for Boonmee to lead the way.

As she escorted him up the ramp and inside the ship, she said, “I don’t suppose you play poker, by any chance.”

“Just Texas Hold ’em, Omaha, and a few dozen variants of five- and seven-card stud.”

She chuckled. “You’ll fit right in here, Doc.”

An anxious hush settled over the white-jacketed scientists of the Vault who unpacked the first of dozens of shipping containers ferried from Eremar to Vanguard aboard the
Sagittarius
. Ming Xiong watched with anticipation and fear as the researchers
handled the twelve-sided crystal artifacts with silent reverence and transferred them to a number of analysis chambers inside the Vault’s central containment area. Each dodecahedron would be checked for defects or damage as a prerequisite for inclusion in the next phase of the team’s research.

Admiral Nogura stood beside Doctor Carol Marcus a few meters to Xiong’s right. They observed the painstaking process from behind the transparent steel protective barrier that separated the master control console from the workstations that ringed the circular isolation chamber, which housed the artifacts. Lieutenant Theriault stood close by on Xiong’s left, watching the Vault scientists with equal measures of worry and envy.

Standing apart from everyone else, T’Prynn lurked near the lab’s entrance, her motives as inscrutable as ever while she monitored the meticulously choreographed proceedings.

Theriault nudged Xiong with her elbow. “Hard to believe we came back with fifty-five hundred of these things, right? What do you think you’ll do with all of them?”

“We’re hoping to use the visual scans you made of the Eremar Array to create a similar framework here, but in a far more compact form.” Despite the enormity of the find by the crew of the scout ship, Xiong shook his head slowly with disappointment. “I’m still upset the Tholians destroyed the other half of the artifacts before you could recover them. When I think about how much potential each of these objects has, it feels like a major loss to science.”

The young female science officer turned a disbelieving stare toward Xiong. “Are you kidding? If you want to talk about a loss to science, shed a few tears for the Dyson bubble that fell into the pulsar. It was ninety-nine percent gone
before
the Tholians fragged it, and I
still
could have spent the next thirty years finding out what made it tick.” Her shoulders slumped, giving her a defeated aspect as she looked back at the growing mass of artifacts inside the isolation chamber. “I sure hope those things are worth it, because I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering what I might have learned from poking around on those statites.”

Beyond the protective barrier, the scientists who weren’t directly involved in unpacking the artifacts or configuring them into an array were busy monitoring the first scan results. Deltan theoretical physicist Doctor Tarcoh hovered over a sensor display and pointed out one new string of data after another to Doctor Varech jav Gek. The excitable Tellarite molecular chemist fidgeted madly with each new bit of information, and he seemed to have no idea what to do with his beefy, three-fingered hands, so he just waved them about in between scratching his head or hugging himself, ostensibly to contain his excitement.

Nogura kept his eyes on the activity in the lab as he sidled over to Xiong. There was an undercurrent of concern in his voice. “Lieutenant, are you sure we have enough power and shielding to keep this array contained? I don’t want a repeat of what happened to the
Lovell
.”

“Based on the readings we made of the first two artifacts, both in tandem and individually, we’re certain the new isolation protocols are more than sufficient.”

The admiral’s salt-and-pepper brow furrowed with doubt. “That’s what you and the Corps of Engineers told me before a Shedai turned a
Daedalus
-class starship into confetti.”

Xiong clenched his jaw for a moment until he was able to answer his superior officer calmly. “That was because we’d weakened the crystal lattice of that artifact by transmitting an amplified and highly focused subspace pulse into it, while trying to communicate with the entity inside. That’s not a mistake we’ll make again.”

That seemed to appease the admiral. “What do you plan to do with this array once it’s finished and operational?”

“In theory, anything the Shedai could have done with their network will be within our grasp,” Xiong said. “We can harness the Conduits for everything from force projection to real-time communications across distances beyond the range of the strongest subspace signal. And once we have the Shedai contained, we’ll be free to explore and colonize the Taurus Reach, and take our time unraveling the information encoded within the meta-genome.”

Carol Marcus stepped up alongside Nogura, in a hurry to join the discussion. “Hang on, gentlemen. I think we need to start by finding a way to communicate with the Shedai we’re already holding, before we go looking to snare any more.”

Nogura’s manner was withering. “With all respect, Doctor, diplomacy isn’t high on our list of priorities concerning the Shedai.” He turned his back on Marcus, faced Xiong, and continued in a more businesslike manner. “Assuming this array works as planned, what would be the risks to the station in a worst-case scenario?”

As he considered the admiral’s question, Xiong was distracted for a moment when he noticed that T’Prynn had moved to stand at the transparent wall of the isolation chamber and was staring intently at the first Tkon artifact they’d ever acquired, the one she herself had helped recover from Klingon forces on a distant planet called Golmira.

Forcing his attention back to the conversation, Xiong said, “A worst-case scenario, from our perspective, would be one that resulted in a massive energy spike from this laboratory’s dedicated power plant into the array, compromising the integrity of the artifacts’ lattices. In such an event, if they were operating at or beyond their intended capacity, that might be enough to permit the Shedai imprisoned within them to break free, as did the one aboard the
Lovell
. But we have several redundant safeguards against that kind of power spike, sir. Nothing short of catastrophic damage to the system would put us at risk.”

“All right,” Nogura said. “Proceed as planned, and send me daily status updates. Unless there’s a significant development, for better or worse—in that case, notify me immediately.”

“Aye, sir.”

Marcus stepped in front of Nogura. “Admiral, I have serious misgivings about the operation you’re asking us to conduct. Frankly, I don’t think we know anywhere near enough about these artifacts to control them properly, and until we do far more research under controlled conditions, I can’t approve any plan that calls for them to be daisy-chained together into an array
whose functions are not only unknown but also potentially disastrous. Even more important, I have to protest the callous disregard that you and Starfleet have shown toward our Shedai captive. Such barbaric treatment of a sentient life-form is an offense against the laws of the Federation and the principles of Starfleet. Until we establish communication with that being, I refuse to subject it to further experimentation.”