Star Trek: Vanguard: Storming Heaven (43 page)

T’Prynn’s voice cut through the dire wailing of the Shedai.
“Mister Xiong! Do you copy? Are you ready for transport?”

Startled back to his senses, Xiong replied, “Negative. I . . . I have to finish something.”

“The rest of the crew is being beamed out as we speak.
Endeavour
is holding position until all personnel are accounted for. How long until you’re ready?”

An entire row of crystals shattered and rained to the floor in shards. A vast cloud of unnatural black smoke roiled inside the isolation chamber, its inky swirls swimming with violet motes of energy, its entire mass seething with violence and malice.

Xiong fought the temptation to trigger the self-destruct sequence right then. Instead, he forced himself to patch in a feed from Vanguard’s passive sensors, revealing the positions of the
Endeavour
and the
Enterprise,
the circling mass of the Tholian armada, and the escaping convoy of civilian vessels escorted by the
Sagittarius
.

“Tell them I won’t be coming,” Xiong said.

It was the only choice he could live with. If he set a long-enough delay on the self-destruct timer to permit the two
Constitution
-class starships to reach minimum safe distance, he couldn’t be certain the escaping Shedai wouldn’t disable the system after he left. If he triggered it now, he would doom the two starships and everyone aboard them to a fiery end. His only way of making sure he’d contained the threat he’d helped awaken
three years earlier was to stand over it and personally drag it down into oblivion.

“Captain Khatami refuses to leave you behind,”
T’Prynn said several seconds later.
“Stand by while we establish a transporter lock on your communicator.”

Cracks began to form in the transparent enclosure of the isolation chamber, the wall of triple-reinforced transparent steel that the engineers had assured him was impenetrable.

Xiong realized the
Endeavour
’s crew would never abandon him as long as there remained a chance that they could pluck him from danger, and he had no time to explain the true nature of the threat before them. He couldn’t take the chance that they would steal him away and leave the Shedai free to terrorize the galaxy for another aeon.

He dropped his communicator to the floor and crushed it under his heel. Putting his weight into it, he ground the fragile device beneath his boot until nothing remained but broken bits and coarse dust.

Inside the isolation chamber, the array collapsed like a house of cards in a gale.

A symphony of shattering crystal filled the air.

Then came the darkness.

T’Prynn watched Xiong’s communicator signal go dark, and then its transponder went off line.

Over the comm, one of the
Endeavour
’s transporter chiefs was in a panic.
“Vanguard! What happened? We’ve lost your man’s signal!”

“Stand by,” T’Prynn said. “I’m trying to isolate his life signs using the internal sensors, but he’s inside a heavily shielded area of the station.”

“Make it quick,”
the chief said.
“We’re being told it’s time to go.”

Massive interference from the starbase’s overloading reactors and numerous radiation leaks from battle damage made it difficult
for T’Prynn to get a clear reading from the station’s lower core levels. Then the signal resolved for a moment—long enough for her to confirm that the Vault’s antimatter-based self-destruct system had been armed, and that the secret laboratory was awash in the most concentrated readings of Shedai life signs she had ever witnessed.

If Xiong was doing what she suspected, then speed was now of the essence.

A final check of her panel confirmed that all the other personnel who had made it to the evac sites had been beamed out. She reopened the channel to the
Endeavour
.

“We’ve lost Lieutenant Xiong,” she said. “Retreat at maximum speed as soon as I’m aboard. One to beam up. T’Prynn out.”

Kirk swelled with admiration for his crew. Asked to do the impossible, they had carried it off with aplomb, unleashing the
Enterprise
’s formidable arsenal against the Tholian armada despite being locked into a circular flight pattern with no margin for evasion or error.

Even as the ship had lurched and shuddered beneath a devastating series of disruptor blasts and plasma detonations, chief engineer Montgomery Scott had kept the shields at nearly full power, and helmsman Hikaru Sulu hadn’t wavered an inch from the close-formation position Kirk had ordered him to maintain between the
Enterprise
and the
Endeavour
. Ensign Pavel Chekov’s targeting had been exemplary—not only had he dealt his share of damage to the Tholians, he had even picked off several of their incoming plasma charges, detonating them harmlessly in open space several kilometers from the ship.

Every captain thinks his crew is the best,
Kirk mused with pride.
I
know
mine is
.

Lieutenant Uhura swiveled away from the communications panel. “Captain, we’re being hailed by the
Endeavour
. Captain Khatami’s given the order to withdraw at best possible speed.”

“Then it’s time to go,” Kirk said. “Sulu, widen our radius,
give them room to break orbit. Set course for the convoy, warp factor six.”

Spock stepped down into the command well and approached Kirk’s chair. “Captain, sensors show the
Endeavour
’s warp drive is off line. She will not be able to stay with us.”

“Sulu, belay my last.” Kirk spun his chair toward Uhura. “Get me Captain Khatami.”

A thunderous collision dimmed the lights and the deck pitched sharply, sending half the bridge crew tumbling to starboard. Kirk held on to his chair until the inertial dampers and artificial gravity reset to normal. “Damage report!”

Spock hurried back to his station and checked the sensor readouts. “Dorsal shield buckling. Hull breach on Decks Three and Four, port side.”

Uhura interjected, “I have Captain Khatami, sir.”

“On-screen,” Kirk said. As soon as Khatami’s weary, bloodstained face appeared on the main viewscreen, Kirk asked, “How long until your warp drive’s back on line, Captain?”

The transmission became hashed with interference as
Endeavour
weathered another jarring hit. Khatami coughed and waved away smoke.
“Any minute now. Go ahead without us.”

“With all respect, Captain: Not a chance. Signal us when you’re ready for warp speed. We’ll cover you till then. Kirk out.” He glanced at Uhura and made a quick slashing gesture, and she closed the transmission before Khatami could argue with him. “New plan. Sulu, stay on the
Endeavour
’s aft quarter and act as her shield until they recover warp power. Chekov, concentrate all fire aft—discourage the Tholians from chasing us. Spock, angle all deflector screens aft. Everyone else, get comfortable; we’re in for a very bumpy ride.”

Billions of radiant specks swam in the frigid darkness that surrounded Ming Xiong. Demonic howls and wails assailed him, but his eardrums were still ringing with tinnitus from the sharp crack of the isolation chamber’s reinforced door exploding away from its frame and pealing the distant bulkhead like a church bell.

He couldn’t bring himself to scream as the Shedai erupted in a torrent from the isolation chamber and gathered around him in a great cloud, a storm of ice and shadow. His mind was numb, his very existence reduced to a state of inarticulate horror. All he could do was cling to his pedestal-shaped console and watch the real-time sensor readouts.

The
Enterprise
and the
Endeavour
were still too close to the station for him to risk triggering the self-destruct system.
Why haven’t they gone to warp?
He feared with each passing moment that he might have to condemn them to share his fate.

At the same time, except for a small force of ships that were pursuing the
Endeavour
and the
Enterprise,
the Tholian armada was redeploying into a close-range heavy bombardment formation around the station. As devoutly as Xiong wished he could have left this matter to them, he couldn’t trust their weapons to even affect the Shedai, much less guarantee their destruction. Worse, their impending barrage might damage the Vault’s self-destruct system enough to prevent it from unleashing its maximum yield at the moment of detonation, so he would have to trigger the autodestruct package as soon as they resumed fire on the station, regardless of whether the
Endeavour
and the
Enterprise
had escaped the blast zone.

And still, all he wanted to do was run.

A dark flash of motion, a black blur in the shadows, and he felt the sharp bite of an obsidian blade as it slammed through his torso. His knees buckled, and then he felt as if he were standing on rubber legs. Blood, warm and tasting of tin, gurgled up his esophagus and spilled over his chin. He looked down and saw the broadsword-sized, jagged-edged mass that had impaled him. Following its edge back toward its source, he saw that it became translucent within a meter of his body, and after that it gradually changed states, first to a dense liquid and then to a tenuous mass of vapor extended from the great cloud of Shedai.

The tentacle jerked back, yanking its black blade from Xiong’s body in an agonizing blur that left him clutching at his belly with one hand and hanging onto his console with the other. Where he expected to find his blood and viscera spilling out, he found a freezing cold mass of quartzlike stone covering his wound. Then he felt its deathly chill traveling across his skin, and he realized it was spreading. An icy, stabbing sensation inside his gut alerted him to the substance’s cancerlike progression through his internal organs. Cold suffused his body, and he felt his strength ebbing along with his body’s heat.

Then he became aware of other presences, distinct entities, drawing near to him. Hunched giants of smoke and indigo light, they wore auras of arrogance and malice like crowns of evil. The unholy host of spectral figures pressed inward. Then one spoke with a voice that wed the roar of an avalanche with the fathomless echoes of a Martian canyon.
“Foolish little spark.”
Rich with condescension, its Jovian baritone shook the station.
“What made your kind think it could ever contain such as us? You are but glimmers in the endless gaze of time. Weak minds trapped inside sacks of rotting flesh and fragile bone. You are
nothing
.”

Xiong wished he had some irreverent reply, some witty retort for its taunts, but all he had was a mouthful of blood and a body shivering with hypothermia and adrenaline overload.

“So? Who are you?”

“I am the Progenitor, the wellspring of all that is Shedai. First among the elite.”

“Good for you.”

He stole a look at the console.
Endeavour
and
Enterprise
remained at impulse.
Come on. Go, already!

The Progenitor loomed over him, its countenance one of perfect darkness, a black hole surrounded by sickly hues and pestilent vapors. Its approach sent frost creeping across Xiong’s console.
“All your worlds will pay for your trespasses. Your kind will learn to fear us like never before.”
A tentacle of smoke coiled around Xiong’s throat and solidified into a substance that felt like solid muscle sheathed in cold vinyl. Then it lifted him up against the ceiling and started choking him by slow degrees.
“Beg for mercy, and I will grant you a swift death. Defy me, and I will keep your consciousness alive to witness every horror and atrocity we visit upon your pathetic Federation.”

The Tholian armada was in position. Its final siege was only moments away.

Xiong could barely feel his hands as he clutched at the Progenitor’s black tentacle. Looking down in terror and anguish, he glimpsed his console, which was now blanketed by a paper-thin layer of frost. He could no longer see the sensor readout’s fine details, but he could still see two bright blue points of light that he knew were the escaping Starfleet ships.

Then both dots vanished from the display.
They’ve made the jump to warp!

He forced out a desperate whisper, “Mercy . . .”

The Progenitor dropped him. He rolled as he hit the floor, coming to a stop in front of his console. Fighting past the torturous sensation of a hundred needles of ice drilling through his intestines, Xiong fought his way back to his feet and slumped against his console. He had planned to do so as a ruse, but it had become a necessity.

“So,”
the Progenitor mocked,
“it’s to be a quick death, is it?”

Xiong looked up at the Progenitor and flashed a bloodied grin. “You have no idea.”

He pressed the autodestruct trigger, and his pit of darkness turned to light.

Bruised and aching, Admiral Nogura stepped out of the turbolift and onto the bridge of the
Endeavour,
only to be brusquely shouldered aside by the ship’s surgeon, Doctor Anthony Leone, and one of its nurses, who together carried out an unconscious and maimed young lieutenant on a stretcher. “Out of the way,” Leone said, his nasal voice tolerating no argument. The short, sinewy physician seemed to regard Nogura not as a flag officer but as an obstacle.

The turbolift doors hissed closed behind Nogura as he inched toward the center of the bridge. Captain Khatami appeared to have suffered her fair share of lacerations from airborne debris. Blood trickled down from above her hairline and seeped from a cut beside her right eye; numerous bloodstains tainted her gold command jersey in flecks and streaks.

Apparently having caught sight of Nogura out of the corner of her eye, Khatami swiveled her chair toward him. “Admiral, are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Though I might have to court-martial Lieutenant T’Prynn. Again.”

A curious look. “For what?”