Star Trek: Vanguard: Storming Heaven (30 page)

All he could do was surrender to the brutal energies that assailed him and let their wild surges of power course through him and bear him away, one mote of consciousness at a time, wearing him down to nothing, as flowing water reduces a boulder to a pebble with the passing of ages. He wondered if this was, at last, his end—being condemned to vanish in a final tide of punishment, flayed to his last iota of existence by a torment beyond his ken to describe.

For the first time since his moment of self-inception, the Progenitor was afraid.

Cold and silent, the Wanderer hovered in space above her newly made Conduit. She reached out with her thoughts to perfect its final details and make it a flawless portal for the subtle form of liberated consciousness. Its link to the universe’s boundless reservoir of dark energy was complete, and already she felt the Conduit’s steady emanations of power and harmony.

Soon it would be time to summon the Shedai to take their
vengeance. Before that hour of reckoning, however, she needed to move the Conduit closer to the space fortress. It would be an arduous process, and it would require great patience and stealth on her part not to alert them to her presence. Because the other
Serrataal
lacked her ability to traverse space by will alone, it would be up to her to place the Conduit in contact with the exterior of the
Telinaruul
’s fortress, penetrate its fragile metal skin, and then usher her kin inside. Then they would cleanse its interior of its vermin creators—a prelude for the galactic culling to come.

A wail of terror issued from the Conduit and struck the Wanderer with overwhelming force. Driven by fear and reflex, she made her essence cohere when all she wanted to do was flee. The excruciating shrillness of the signal abated, and then the Wanderer knew what it was that she heard: the Song of the Progenitor! Its message was simple, pure, and clear. He was calling out to her, imploring her to answer his summons, to hie unto him without delay.

This was not the plan,
she told herself, even as she felt her essence succumb to the Progenitor’s will. His voice was like that of no other Shedai; it was uniquely hypnotic and utterly compelling. Its beguiling melody transited the Conduit and called the other
Serrataal
.

I have opened the way,
the Progenitor said.
Gather now and be with me at last
.

The Wanderer felt a surge of elation as she let the Progenitor’s voice guide her subtle body of consciousness into the signal stream.
Perhaps he has turned their weapon against them!

She surrendered to the flow of the Song, expecting at any moment to recorporealize inside the
Telinaruul
’s risibly vulnerable fortress. Only as she passed over the Conduit’s final threshold did she detect, in the most ephemeral sense, that something was amiss.

But by then it was too late to save herself—or to warn the others who would follow.

Waves of panic crashed through the Progenitor’s formless prison. Thousands of
Serrataal
voices cried out in bitter fury,
We have been deceived!

In their flashes of memory he beheld a vision of a molten world where they had massed, and though he had not heard any voice in aeons except that of the Wanderer, he recognized them all, each one by its special timbre and quality: the Sage, the Adjudicator, the Warden, the Herald, and countless others. Still first among them all was the Maker, whose confusion, he realized, had arrived separate from the others. Many of the old voices seemed absent, though, and he soon became aware that the missing were the Apostate and those whom he had counted as partisans.

So, the great war within our ranks came at last,
the Progenitor deduced. He reasoned that the Maker and her faithful had prevailed. Or had they? Ages earlier, the Tkon had fashioned this prison of the mind with the Apostate’s aid; might this be his great revenge delivered at last?

It did not matter, he decided. At last, he and his progeny were reunited. Together, they would break free of their bonds and renew their patient conquest of the galaxy.

He concentrated, and projected his thoughts through the lattice of united minds.

Be silent. Be still.

Where he had expected obeisance, he found an onslaught of fury and rebellion.
Why did you lure us here?
they shrieked.
You betrayed us! You’ve led us into bondage!

He quelled their storm of protest with a command like a supernova.

BE SILENT. BE STILL.

Their bonfire of rage was extinguished. Reverent awe took its place.

The Wanderer’s voice pronounced to the darkness,
This is He of Whom I Spoke.

Thousands of
Serrataal
sought the guidance of the Maker. She opened her thoughts to the Progenitor, and he reciprocated,
while the universe without form that surrounded them echoed with the voices of their scions, the elite of those born to rule creation.

Hundreds of voices wondered in unison,
Can it really be He?
Others insisted,
This cannot be. He was only ever a myth, a tale of our forgotten past.
Doubt rippled through the ranks of the
Serrataal,
tainting their enforced Colloquium.

Silence reigned as the Maker and the Progenitor ended their communion.

It is He,
she declared.

All their minds opened to him then, yearning to know the shape of his thoughts.

I am He who was before all else,
he proclaimed.
He who begat you, tiny godlings. He whose mind is never at rest, whose dreams are the thunder of a million beating wings.

You are my crashing waves, but I am the sea.

You are my flashes of lightning, but I am the storm.

You are my constant starlight, but I am the darkness.

Together, we shall free ourselves from this abyss of damnation . . . and punish all who dare to think themselves our equals.

My God.
Xiong could hardly believe the numbers flying across his computer screen.
It’s a miracle the whole thing didn’t just melt down
. “Containment status! Report!”

“Um . . .” Theriault was tweaking controls and struggling to get a final set of data points from her own panel. “Containment is holding—barely. All assigned nodes have been filled.”

Turning to his right, Xiong shot a hopeful look at Klisiewicz. “Contacts?”

“Nothing but Conduits,” Klisiewicz said. “All Shedai signatures clear.”

Hearing the news out loud made Xiong exhale with such relief that he almost felt deflated. He leaned forward on his panel, supporting himself with one hand while he used the other to palm the
sweat from his forehead and push it back up into his hair. “Holy shit,” he said, almost laughing. “We did it! We nearly fried every circuit in here . . . but we really did it.”

Klisiewicz leaned over to steal a look at Xiong’s panel. “Good lord! Look at the power levels inside the array. Is that where it stabilized
after
we closed the circuit?”

“Yup,” Xiong said. “Our new guests are generating all that on their own. It’s completely off the charts. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

A comm signal beeped on Xiong’s panel. He thumbed open the channel. “Xiong here.”

Nogura’s voice was quieter than usual.
“What happened down there, Lieutenant?”

“It worked, sir. We’ve got the Shedai.”

“So, you’ve recaptured it, eh?”

“No, sir,” Xiong corrected. “Not just the one Shedai. We got
all
of them.”

A long pause followed.
“Are you certain?”

“Every last Shedai life sign is locked up inside the array.” He traded smiles with Theriault and Klisiewicz, then added, “Shall I send them your regards, sir?”

“By all means,”
Nogura said.
“And, might I add . . . well done, Ming.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll have a full report on your desk inside the hour. Xiong out.” He closed the channel. Half a second later, the Starfleet science personnel crowding the Vault erupted in wild cheers of victory and relief. Some embraced one another; a few clapped.

All that Xiong wanted to do was sit down. If that worked out, he had designs on returning to his quarters and sleeping for a few days, maybe a week. He slogged back to his office—which until very recently had been Doctor Marcus’s office, but before that had been his office, a fact that assuaged some of his guilt about reclaiming it—and sank into his chair. He let his body go limp and his jaw slack as he tilted his head back to admire the ceiling.

His chair slowly spun in a half circle, and as the office’s doorway drifted into his line of sight, he saw Lieutenant Theriault standing in it.

She seemed reluctant to intrude on him. “Sir?”

“Vanessa, we just saved the galaxy together. You can call me Ming.”

“Um, okay. I just wanted to point out that the energy being produced by the Shedai has leveled off, but if it goes much higher for more than a few minutes at a time, we might start to lose containment. It would probably just be a few nodes at first, but . . . well, it wouldn’t be good, is what I’m saying.”

He rubbed his eyes and sat up. “Okay. Do you have a recommendation?”

“Well, it might sound crazy, but . . . maybe we should put in a self-destruct system.”

Xiong chuckled. “It doesn’t sound crazy at all. The Vault already has one.” He admired the grim practicality of Starfleet’s engineers. “It was the first system we installed.”

There was no harmony in the Lattice. Alarm and discord flared and spread like an infection through the SubLinks of the armada under the command of Tarskene [The Sallow], and despite the best efforts of Subcommander Kezthene [The Gray], discipline was slow in returning.

All had heard the Song of the Enemy. Its hated tones had filled local space for only a moment, trumpeting distress and hostility to all who had the ability to hear. Then the Voice, so long despised and feared, had been silenced, and its blazing colors, which had flooded the Lattice, vanished like a snuffed flame. No one knew what it meant—Tarskene least of all.

Moving past his subordinates, he activated the subspace thoughtwave transmitter. Projecting his thought-colors via the Warrior Castemoot SubLink, he accessed the InterLink and petitioned the Ruling Conclave of the Political Castemoot for an immediate audience. Seconds passed while he awaited a response,
and he labored to cleanse his mind-line of fretful hues. It would not do for him to present ideas clouded by fear or insecurity.

Velrene [The Azure] acknowledged Tarskene’s salutation with muddled colors, which Tarskene took to suggest that she and the Ruling Conclave had also heard the Song of the Enemy. Her inter-voice wavered with disquiet.
What news, Commander?

He projected memory facets shared among his armada’s personnel. From thousands of different mind-lines, the Song of the Enemy echoed and stopped.
You have heard it
.

All have heard it
. Velrene sent back fragments of countless memory-lines, from worlds throughout the Assembly.
The Voice was heard on every world
.

Tarskene appended his memory-line to the others.
And then it was silenced
.

Is the Enemy gone?
Her inquiry was tinted with hope.

Resentment, fury, and fear darkened Tarskene’s thought-colors.
Not gone. Snared. By the Federation, aboard its space station
.

Velrene’s mind-line fragmented with disbelief, then surged crimson with rage.
It is not possible to contain the Old Ones! They must be destroyed!

He tried to share soothing hues and calming tones via the InterLink, but Velrene’s anger blazed like a wall of lava.
We do not yet know the Federation’s intentions. They may yet choose to destroy the Old Ones, for their own safety if nothing else.

She met his suggestion with sickly hues.
Doubtful. The Conclave must confer
.

A dull gray hum informed Tarskene that his mindwave on the InterLink had been muted. All he could do was wait while Velrene and the other members of Tholia’s ruling elite weighed the matter and sought to harmonize their thought-colors.

A mellisonant chiming summoned him back to attention.

Velrene’s mind-line radiated resolve.
For now, Commander, hold the armada where it stands, and observe the space station. If the Federation’s soldiers destroy the Old Ones and take our vengeance for us, so be it
. Then her inter-voice shimmered with
violent intent.
But if they try to steal the power of the Enemy for themselves, that we cannot abide. In such an event, we will have no choice but to act for the good of Tholia—and the galaxy—no matter the cost
.

Tarskene mirrored the colors of Velrene’s mind-line with fidelity.

So shall it be done
.

It had been obvious for a couple of days that something big was happening on the station. Because Fisher was no longer on active duty, no one could tell him anything, but he hadn’t needed to hear the news firsthand. He could tell by the way conversations between Starfleet personnel spontaneously halted or sank into whispers as he passed by in his civilian clothes, and by the heightened level of excitement that seemed to be spreading through the crew like a contagion.

There was no point in angling for information; no one would talk. He guessed the chatter was probably related to Operation Vanguard, in which case he was happier not knowing.

At the same time, he saw no reason to sequester himself in his quarters, which were almost bare now that most of his personal effects had been loaded aboard the transport
Lisbon
for the journey home—whenever the hell that ended up happening. Delays of incoming cargo had postponed the ship’s departure by at least another week, leaving Fisher with nothing to do but sleep, eat, read, and wander the public areas of the station. He passed most of his afternoons on Fontana Meadow, watching the ad hoc games of competitive sports that tended to spring up on the sprawling greensward that ringed the station’s core, enjoying the fragrance of fresh-cut grass, or reading beside one of the pools, surrounded by the astringent odor of chlorine.