Star Trek: Vanguard: Storming Heaven (6 page)

“Watch those power levels,” she said to Doctor Hofstadter as she passed his console. “We can’t afford a spike.” The dark-haired, bespectacled researcher nodded once in confirmation of Marcus’s instruction, then he resumed his work. Striding past another station, Marcus paused long enough to lean past Doctor Tarcoh, a spindly, soft-spoken Deltan man of middle years. She activated a function on his panel. “Remember to keep the sensors in passive mode. I don’t want to feed this thing any signals it can use. You saw what happened last time.” Tarcoh continued his work, duly chastised for his error.

The “last time” Marcus had spoken of, and which every scientist on her team recalled all too vividly, was a disastrous attempt to make contact with a Shedai trapped inside a Mirdonyae Artifact identical to the one still housed inside the Vault’s main isolation chamber. The steps that had been necessary to transmit a signal through the artifact’s baffling subatomic lattices had also enabled the creature snared inside it to replenish its power and exploit damage the Federation researchers had unwittingly wrought in the artifact. That error had led to an explosive episode of escape and the violent destruction of the Starfleet Corps of Engineers vessel
U.S.S. Lovell
.

As she moved around the laboratory, checking status gauges and second-guessing all her colleagues’ work, her Starfleet counterpart, Lieutenant Ming Xiong, fell into step beside her. “He’s still waiting for you in your office,” Xiong said.

The reminder turned her mood into thin ice—cold and brittle. “Let him wait.”

Marcus kept moving, and Xiong followed her. “He’s showing you a courtesy by coming down here. He could’ve had you hauled up to his office.”

She ignored Xiong’s warning and took a moment to sidle up to Doctor Koothrappali. “Keep an eye on the plasma capacitors. If they redline, dump the charge through the station’s main deflector dish. Don’t ask for permission, don’t wait to be told. Just do it.”

The longer Marcus pretended nothing was wrong, the more apparent Xiong’s anxiety became. “This isn’t a joke, Doctor. And it’s not some mere formality.”

“When did
you
become such a stickler for rules and regulations?” As soon as she’d said it, she felt a pang of regret, because Xiong’s reflexive wince told her she’d struck a nerve. The young lieutenant had once enjoyed a reputation on Vanguard as a maverick and iconoclast. The last few years, however, had broken his spirit by slow degrees; the final straw had been the recent demise of his friend Lieutenant Commander Bridget McLellan, known to her friends as Bridy Mac. The former second officer of the
Sagittarius,
McLellan had been reassigned to Starfleet Intelligence as a covert operative attached to Operation Vanguard. Xiong had often spoken of her as his “big sister.” Her death in the line of duty, while on a mission to which he had assigned her, had left him emotionally devastated for weeks.

She reached out, gently grasped his upper arm, and stepped away from the workstations with him. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to say that . . . you know . . .”

“I know what you were trying to say.”

Realizing there was no quick fix for the hurt she’d just inflicted, Marcus chose to change the subject. “All right, you win. Let’s go talk to him.” Over her shoulder, she called to the other scientists, “Everyone, I’ll just be a minute. Don’t start the procedure till I get back.”

Neither she nor Xiong spoke as they walked to her office. The door whished open ahead of her, and she entered her tidy private
work space to find the station’s chief of security, Lieutenant Haniff Jackson, standing in front of her desk, facing the door, waiting for her. The broad-shouldered man looked decidedly displeased by the prolonged wait she had inflicted on him. “Doctor. Nice of you to join me. I was beginning to think you’d fled the station.”

“Are you kidding me?” She edged past him to get behind her desk and reclaim the room’s sole power position. Turning back to face him, she continued. “This whole place has been turned into a fortress. Armed guards at the only entrance, weapons systems inside the lab waiting to unleash holy hell, all on the word of someone up in ops. I doubt I could escape if I wanted to.”

The zeal with which she’d delivered her harangue seemed to have embarrassed Xiong, who avoided her gaze, choosing instead to stare at his shoes as if they were the most interesting things he had ever seen. Jackson, meanwhile, seemed not the least bit put off by her tirade. “Doctor, I understand that the enhanced security measures we’ve installed here in the Vault might seem a bit excessive—”

She was livid. “A bit? Reactor-grade reinforced bulkheads? Fast-acting antimatter self-destruct packages built into the floors? Why would I find that excessive?”

“I appreciate your sarcasm, Doctor. Really, I do. But you need to understand that Admiral Nogura doesn’t share my carefree sense of humor. Especially when it comes to violations of the security protocols regarding off-station communications.”

“You mean when I decide my rights to free expression trump your right to censor me.”

Palms upturned, Jackson said, “That’s one way of putting it.”

“I am so sick of Starfleet and its euphemisms,” Marcus said. “Call it what it is: censorship. I, for one, won’t stand for it. I have rights as a Federation citizen.”

Her declaration left Jackson looking pained. “Actually, ma’am, out here, you don’t. Right now you’re on a Starfleet base, which means you need to live and work by our rules.”

Marcus felt a wave of heat prickle her scalp and knew her face
had flushed with anger. “That is
not
what I signed on for, Lieutenant. I never agreed to those terms.”

“It doesn’t matter what you agreed to or think you agreed to. I’m just telling you how it is.” He leaned forward and tapped a data slate that he had left in the center of her desktop. “This is an official warning from Admiral Nogura. Do not share
any
of your research data with anyone off this station, no matter how innocuous or generic you think that data is.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” She looked to Xiong, hoping, perhaps irrationally, that he might leap to her defense if prompted. “Xiong, explain to this man that independent peer review is an essential component of all serious research.”

Xiong lifted his eyes from the floor long enough to glance sheepishly into Jackson’s unyielding stare, then he cast an apologetic look at Marcus. “I’m sorry, Doctor, but I have to agree with Starfleet on this one. We can’t let even one shred of this data out of here. Not yet.”

Jaw agape, Marcus shouted at her colleague, “Are you serious? That’s it? You’re just going to roll over and play dead? I thought you were a scientist, Ming!”

An awkward hush filled the room. Jackson cleared his throat and stiffened his posture. “Please read the memo from Admiral Nogura, ma’am. If you violate the station’s security protocols again, we’ll reserve the right to impose punitive measures in order—”

“Screw your security protocols. And get the hell out of my office.
Now
.”

Jackson forced a polite if joyless smile onto his face. “As you wish, Doctor.” He dipped his chin toward Xiong. “Lieutenant.” Then he turned on his heel and left the office.

The moment the door closed behind him, Xiong looked up at Marcus with pleading eyes. “Are you crazy? What the hell are you thinking, provoking him like that?”

Disgusted with Starfleet in general and Xiong in particular, she flashed an angry look as she marched past him on her way back to work. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m trying to get fired.”

The night life in Stars Landing was winding down as Pennington ambled homeward, stopping every few paces to kick some newly discovered fleck of Quinn’s emesis from his shoes.

It was late, just after 0215 according to the station’s chronometer, to which he’d synchronized his wrist chrono. Most of the commercial businesses in Stars Landing had closed hours earlier, and now the restaurants and drinking establishments were ejecting their patrons, the courtesies of last call fulfilled. Watching the ordinary folks of Vanguard—enlisted personnel, civilian residents, transient colonists waiting for a chance to depart for some new life—he imagined that Quinn must once have counted himself among their number. Watching his friend and former accomplice in adventure accelerate into a downward spiral saddened him. Quinn’s grief was so raw that it resurrected Pennington’s memories of Oriana D’Amato, his own lost love, who had perished years earlier when the Tholians destroyed the
U.S.S. Bombay
.

He had thought his own experiences would give him some insight into Quinn’s state, some clue how to guide the man through his labyrinth of mourning and back to the world of the still-living. Instead, he’d discovered the hard way that each person’s path through the valley of the shadow was as unique as their own soul, and that everyone had to make the journey alone.

All I can do is be there and keep him from ending up dead or in jail,
he decided.
The rest has to be up to him
.

Submerged in his own thoughts, he almost failed to notice the faint echo of music from somewhere nearby. He stopped and looked around, and saw that he was outside the front door of Manón’s cabaret, an upscale establishment that had become one of Stars Landing’s most popular nightspots as well as Vanguard’s de facto officers’ club. The cabaret was closed and dark, and its front entrance was locked when he tried it. Then he put his ear against a window and listened.

Through the glass, he heard a few awkward notes from the cabaret’s baby grand piano.
Plink. Plunk
. There was no melody,
no rhythm to them. They conjured for Pennington the image of someone who didn’t know how to play tapping distractedly at the keys. Despite the haphazard nature of the sound, he was certain he could still sense some kind of emotion behind it—a quiet despair, a longing. He lifted his ear from the glass and tried to peek inside, but the interior blinds were drawn shut, denying him a view of the player.

His curiosity aroused, Pennington circled the building and slipped down the alleyway that ran behind it. Moving in careful, light steps, he approached the restaurant’s rear service entrance and was pleased to discover it slightly ajar. He pulled the door open just wide enough to slip inside, then he eased it back to the way he’d found it.

Once inside, he heard the atonal playing more clearly. He skulked across the kitchen and stopped at the door to the dining room. Peering through its small, eye-level window, he saw T’Prynn sitting at the piano, her fingers hesitating above the keys as if she had never touched the instrument before. Her back was to him, so he couldn’t see her face, but the way she bowed her head and half clenched her right hand spoke volumes to Pennington about the frustration the Vulcan woman must be feeling. Most members of her species were psychologically inscrutable to him, but he had spent several months traveling incognito with T’Prynn after helping her escape Starfleet custody on Vulcan—a ruse that had involved her adopting a fake identity and then marrying Pennington to claim the legal benefits of Earth citizenship, in order to exempt herself from some of her homeworld’s more draconian security policies. As a result of the time they had spent together, he had learned to read the subtle cues of her moods in a way that very few others on the station ever had, or likely ever would.

He recalled watching her play that piano, on that stage, just a couple of years earlier. Her virtuosity had stunned him as much as her choice of portfolio—songs drawn from catalogs of up-tempo Terran blues and jazz, music of tremendous complexity and expressiveness. She had been able to inspire crowds to standing
ovations after performing a single number. Her long, graceful fingers had tickled those keys with subtlety or pounded them without mercy, but always with passion and precision. Now she hunched over the immaculately polished Steinway and poked at it like a child prodding a dead animal with a stick, a portrait of uncertainty and sorrow.

Pennington nudged open the kitchen’s swinging door and sidled into the dining room, hoping to approach a bit closer before announcing himself. As soon as he let the kitchen door close, T’Prynn stopped, turned her head, and stared directly at him.

He was annoyed at being found out so easily.
Damn that Vulcan hearing
.

T’Prynn stood and hurried down the stage steps, then slalomed through the tables and chairs toward him. “What are you doing here, Mister Pennington?”

Hooking his thumb backward, he said, “I heard the music from outside.”

“And you used it as a rationale for trespassing?”

He recoiled from the accusation. “What about you?”

She stopped in front of him. “I’m here with Manón’s permission.”

Looking up slightly to meet her confrontational stare, he was struck by the imposing quality of her dark beauty. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude.”

She took him by the arm and pulled him back the way he’d come, through the kitchen. “If you have no further business here, I’d suggest—”

“Hang on,” he cut in, stumbling to keep up with her. “Maybe I can help.”

“I don’t need your help.” She pushed open the rear exit and shoved Pennington through the doorway, back out to the alley behind the cabaret.

He spun back to face her and grabbed the door’s edge. “I remember how you used to play. You stopped after your breakdown. They’re connected, aren’t they?”

“Most insightful,” T’Prynn said. “But I don’t wish to discuss
it.” She tried to shut the door, but he held it open, albeit with great difficulty. “Let me go.”

He shook his head. “Not till you talk to me. I was there the day you saw the
Malacca
get bombed. I saw the look on your face, and I knew it, ’cause I’d seen it on mine the day I lost someone I loved.” His words seemed to crack T’Prynn’s stern façade, and he saw a fleeting instant of vulnerability in her eyes. Remembering her sexual orientation, he took a chance on a wild guess. “What was her name, T’Prynn?”

She didn’t answer him, but the momentary anguish that possessed her features told him he had deduced the nature of her distress. Visibly struggling to recover her composure, she succeeded only in transforming grief to fury. “Go home, Tim.” Then she yanked the door closed with overwhelming force, and Pennington let it go to prevent her from amputating his fingers.