Destiny: The Complete Saga: Gods of Night, Mere Mortals, and Lost Souls

by David Mack

  “I’ve locked on to our landing coordinates,” Tuvok said, guiding the Mance through a wide turn past twisting, organically shaped towers of dark crystal and delicate metalwork. He pointed at a circular platform situated at the end of a narrow causeway, a hundred meters past the edge of the city’s outermost rampart.

  The XO seemed amused. “All this high technology, but the visitor parking lot’s still out in the boondocks. I guess some things really are universal.” She looked at Tuvok as if she expected him to return her volley of inane banter with one of his own. Noting his pointed lack of a response, she faced forward and muttered, “Tough room.”

  Tuvok centered the shuttlecraft above the landing pad and eased it downward. It made only the slightest bump of contact as it touched down and settled on the platform. As he switched off the thrusters and activated routine command lockouts to secure the craft during the away team’s absence, Vale moved through the aft cabin and marshaled the passengers into motion.

  “Everybody ready?” she asked. The others nodded. She opened the port hatch, letting in a blast of frigid air. “Let’s go.”

  Troi and Torvig were the first to follow Vale out of the shuttlecraft, and then Keru, Dennisar, and Sortollo exited with their rifles slung diagonally across their backs. Tuvok paused at the threshold when he noticed Dr. Ree lingering in the middle of the passenger cabin. “Doctor? Are you all right?”

  “Let’s just say that extreme cold is not a friend of the Pahkwathanh,” Ree replied.

  “Your exposure will be brief,” Tuvok said. “Scans of the city I made during our approach indicate that the average temperature inside its environmental maintenance field is thirty degrees Celsius. I suspect that our landing area has been placed outside the protected zone as an incentive for us to leave the ship and proceed inward.”

  Ree’s tongue flicked twice from between his front fangs, and he rasped, “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.” Then he lumbered through the hatch and out of the ship. Tuvok followed him into the dry, arctic chill.

  “What the hell took you two?” snapped Vale in between huffing warm breath onto her cupped hands. “We’re freezing our asses off out here.” She tucked her hands under her armpits. “Come on. Double-time, people.”

  She led the away team at a brisk jog across the causeway, toward the humbling majesty of the city, whose structures gleamed with reflections of the peach-and-indigo arctic sky and the silhouetted landscape of peaks flanking a virgin sea. Their breath billowed around their heads in short-lived gray plumes as they ran, dispersed by gusts of wind that roared in their ears.

  It was not a long run, but the extreme cold made it seem like one. Ahead of Tuvok, a wave of exhaustion and relief seemed to wash over the away team members. Then he caught up to them and felt the balmy warmth of the city’s protected climate. It was more humid than he would have preferred, but still mild by human standards.

  Dr. Ree arched his head back until his long snout was pointed straight up, and he made several deep snorting sounds, followed by rich, trumpeting blares that sounded as if they had originated deep inside his torso. He relaxed then and noticed the surprised looks from the other away team members. “Warming breaths,” he said. “Just something Pahkwa-thanh have to do after we’re exposed to the cold.”

  Vale gave a tight-lipped smile and said, “Okay, then. If show-and-tell’s over, let’s get …” Her voice tapered off as she stared past the away team, back toward the shuttlecraft. Tuvok and the others turned to follow her gaze.

  The causeway had vanished. A hundred meters away, past a gulf of open air hundreds of meters above an ice-packed arctic sea, the circular landing platform hovered without support. The Mance did not appear to have been damaged; apparently, whoever had removed the causeway had been satisfied merely to render the vessel inaccessible.

  “Well … that’s just great,” Keru said. He looked at Sortollo and Dennisar. “I don’t suppose either of you can do a hundred-meter long jump?”

  Holding up her palms, Vale said, “All right, we came here to work some diplomacy. Getting our ship back will just have to be one of our negotiating terms—right, Counselor?”

  “I think you’ll have to ask them,” Troi said, pointing.

  Tuvok pivoted back toward the city and looked up, along the line of Troi’s outstretched arm. Hundreds of meters above them, from a breezeway connecting two massive but delicate-looking towers, three figures floated downward with swift grace.

  The away team watched in silence as the descending trio neared. Vale, Tuvok, and Troi stepped forward to meet them.

  When the beings came within ten meters of the ground, they slowed and positioned themselves in a line. The two mottled gray-and-blue aliens at either end had their tendril-like fingers folded together in front of them. Their heads were bowed slightly forward, revealing the enormous globes of their skulls. Their generally humanoid shape made the ribbed tubing that ran from their chests to what Tuvok assumed were respiratory tubules near the backs of their heads all the more curious.

  Most curious of all was the figure standing between them.

  According to his tricorder, it was a carbon-based life-form of a kind not previously encountered by the Federation. What he saw was an athletic, healthy, and attractive young human woman with a long and unruly mane of black hair. Judging from her appearance, he estimated her age to be somewhere between her late teens and her early twenties.

  The woman stepped forward and looked at Vale and Troi. Her voice sounded guarded and cautious—and perhaps secretly excited. “Humans,” she said, apparently not discerning that Troi was half-Betazoid. Then she looked at Tuvok. “Vulcan.” She glanced past them at the rest of the away team. “Orion,” she said when she saw Dennisar. Looking at Keru, she said, “Trill.”

  After eyeing Torvig, she said nothing at all.

  Tuvok studied the woman’s face. Something about her seemed familiar to him. He searched his memory and found the reason.

  Troi asked her, “You recognize our species?”

  Before the woman could answer, Tuvok said, “I’m sure she does, Counselor. She is from Earth.” Everyone looked at Tuvok for the explanation. He addressed the woman directly. “You are Captain Erika Hernandez of the Earth starship Columbia, missing in action for more than two hundred years.”

  “Yes,” Hernandez replied. “I was the captain of the Columbia. And I’ve been missing much longer than you think.” She raised her voice to address the rest of the away team. “Welcome to New Erigol.”

  BOOK II

  MERE MORTALS

  HISTORIAN’S NOTE

  The main narrative of Mere Mortals takes place in February of 2381 (Old Calendar), approximately sixteen months after the events of the movie Star Trek Nemesis. The flashback portions begin in 1519 and continue through 2381.

  Our torments also may in length of time

  Become our elements, these piercing fires

  As soft as now severe, our temper changed

  Into their temper.

  —John Milton, Paradise Lost, book 2

  2381

  1

  Blue fire preceded a crimson flash, as one of the Borg cubes on the main viewer erupted into a cloud of blazing wreckage. The two that had followed it from the indigo fog of the Azure Nebula barreled through its spreading debris, accelerated, and opened fire on their lone adversary.

  Pitched alarums of struggle surrounded Captain Jean-Luc Picard, who sat in the bridge’s command chair, stone-faced and silent, watching and hearing the battle unfold around him.

  Over the thunder of energy blasts hammering the shields of the Enterprise, Commander Worf bellowed, “Helm! Attack pattern Echo-One! Tactical, target the closer cube and fire at will!”

  Picard tried to focus on the voices of his crew—Worf barking orders, second officer Miranda Kadohata relaying damage reports, security chief Jasminder Choudhury confirming her targets, and the low buzz of several junior officers manning backup stations and sensor consoles everywhere he look
ed—but they all were drowned out by the one voice that was many: the dehumanized roar of the Borg Collective.

  Resistance is futile. You will be exterminated.

  It had been more than fourteen years since the Borg’s voice had first invaded the sanctum of his mind, when the Collective assimilated him. Transformed into Locutus of Borg, Picard had watched through a dark haze, a spectator to his own life, as the Borg used his knowledge and experience against Starfleet and against Earth. Even after he had been physically liberated from the Collective, he’d remained yoked to its voice, attuned to its soulless group mind.

  His bond to the Collective had faded with the passage of years. He had expected to welcome its permanent absence from his thoughts, but then the Borg returned with an unprecedented ferocity marked by aggressive tactics and a disturbing new motivation. It had been several months since, in a desperate bid to understand the true nature of the new threat posed by the Borg, he had attempted to infiltrate the Collective by posing as Locutus. He’d thought he could outwit them, that experience and innovation would protect him as he dared to plumb their secrets. What a fool I was, he castigated himself.

  A powerful concussion threw the bridge crew to starboard and strobed the lights. A port-side console exploded into smithereens. Glowing-hot bits of smoking debris landed in Picard’s lap, and the momentary jolts of hot pain on his legs broke the spell that the Collective had held over his thoughts.

  He swatted the blackened embers off his thighs as he stood and moved to stand beside Worf. The Klingon executive officer remained focused on directing the battle. “Helm,” Worf shouted as Lieutenant Joanna Faur scrambled back into her chair, “hard to port!” To Choudhury he added, “Ready aft torpedoes!” As Worf turned forward again, Kadohata switched the main screen to display the ship’s retreating aft view. A Borg cube loomed dramatically into sight, dominating the screen. “Fire!”

  Four radiant blue bolts flew from the Enterprise’s aft torpedo launcher and separated as they followed weaving, spiraling paths to the Borg ship. At the final moment they shot toward different faces of the cube. Two penetrated the Borg’s shields and ripped through its hull. Within seconds, cerulean flames consumed the Borg vessel from within and broke it apart. A blinding flash reduced it to fading supercharged particles.

  Two down, one to go, Picard mused as the main viewer image reverted to its normal, forward-facing perspective.

  “Attack pattern Bravo-Eight,” Worf ordered, and the bridge crew translated his words into action with speed and skill.

  Picard heard the intentions of the Collective and saw the trap that Worf had just stumbled into. He snapped, “Belay that! Evasive maneuvers, starb—” The bone-jarring thunderclap of an explosion cut him off, and the deck felt as if it had dropped out from under him. He fell forward and landed on his forearms. A bank of large companels along the aft bulkhead blew apart and showered the bridge with a flurry of sparks and shrapnel.

  Gray, acrid smoke lingered above the shaken bridge crew. “Continue evasive maneuvers,” Worf said to Faur. He plucked a jagged bit of smoking debris from the rings of his metallic Klingon baldric as he stepped behind Kadohata, who was struggling to halt the erratic malfunctions that flickered across the ops console. “Damage report,” Worf said.

  “Hull breaches, Decks Twenty-two and Twenty-three,” replied the lithe human woman of mixed Asian and European ancestry. Her Port Shangri-La accent was just similar enough to a Londoner’s inflections that Picard had to remind himself again that she wasn’t from Earth. “Direct hit on our targeting sensors,” she continued. Then she swiveled her chair to face Worf and added with alarm, “Sir, we can’t lock weapons.”

  Another shot from the Borg cube rocked the Enterprise. “Break off, Number One,” Picard said.

  “Full evasive,” Worf said, “maximum warp. Engage!”

  As Worf stepped quickly from station to station, gathering status reports, Picard moved forward and stood beside Kadohata’s console. In a confidential tone, he said, “Casualty report.”

  Reciprocating his quiet discretion, she replied, “Four dead in engineering, several dozen wounded. Still waiting on official numbers from sickbay, sir.”

  “Understood,” he said.

  Worf finished his circuit of the bridge and returned to Picard’s side. “Captain, the transphasic shields are starting to overload. Lieutenant Choudhury estimates—” Cacophonous booms resonated through the bulkheads. When the echoes had faded, Worf continued, “She estimates shield failure in nine minutes.”

  “Commander,” Picard said to Kadohata, “we need those targeting sensors. Devote all free resources to their repair. Mister Worf, help Lieutenant Choudhury find a way to target our torpedoes manually.”

  The XO nodded and said, “Aye, sir.”

  As Worf walked back to the tactical console, Kadohata confided to Picard, “Sir? The damage to the targeting system was major. I doubt it can be repaired in the next nine minutes. And manually targeting transphasic torpedoes is almost impossible. Without the targeting computer, we’ll never adjust the phase harmonics quickly enough.”

  “What do you suggest, Commander?”

  “With all respect, sir … a distress signal.”

  Picard frowned. “To whom? Our nearest allies are several hours away, at best.”

  Kadohata mustered a bittersweet smile and shrugged. “You have your desperate measures, I have mine.”

  He had to admire her grace in the face of danger. “Make it so,” he said. Then, dropping his voice again, he added with grim resignation, “And prepare the log buoy.”

  * * *

  Captain Ezri Dax was seated and steady, with her hands relaxed on the ends of her command chair’s armrests, but in her mind she was pacing like a caged beast, feverishly circling her anxiety.

  “Time to intercept?” she asked.

  Lieutenant Tharp answered over his shoulder, “Two minutes, Captain.” The Bolian conn officer returned to his controls and faced the main viewer, whose image was dominated by the retreating mass of the Borg cube that was pursuing the Enterprise.

  Her first officer, Commander Sam Bowers, returned from his hushed conference with Lieutenant Lonnoc Kedair, the Takaran chief of security for the Aventine, and stood beside Dax. “I feel like a dog chasing a shuttle,” he said, watching the Borg ship. “Even if we catch it, what do we do then?”

  “Sink our teeth in, Sam,” Dax said. “As deep as we can.”

  Kedair looked up from the tactical console. “We’ve just been scanned by a Borg sensor beam,” she said, her deep-green face darkened half a shade by concern.

  “So much for a surprise attack,” Bowers said.

  “Lieutenant Mirren,” Dax said to her senior operations officer, “signal Enterprise. We need to coordinate our attack.”

  Mirren nodded. “Aye, sir. Hailing them now.”

  “Sixty seconds to firing range,” Tharp said from the conn.

  The cube was large enough now on the main viewer that Dax could discern the layers of snaking machinery and the haphazard network of grids, plates, and crudely grafted pieces of alien machinery that this ship must have assimilated in its past. She couldn’t tell by looking how long ago each component had been acquired, or even guess at how new or old the cube might be. Every Borg cube, from the raw to the battle-scarred, had the same weathered, dull look, the same drab utilitarian aesthetic.

  “Incoming signal from the Enterprise,” Mirren said.

  “On-screen,” Dax replied. A blizzard of visual noise and twisted images danced on the main viewer while banshee wails and the crackle-scratch of static muffled the words of Captain Picard, who Dax could recognize even through the storm of interference. “Mirren,” she said, “can we clean that up?”

  Mirren jabbed at her console and grimaced in frustration. “Trying, Captain. The Borg are jamming us.”

  Lieutenant Commander Gruhn Helkara, the ship’s second officer and the head of its sciences division, called to Dax from one of the aft bridg
e stations. “Captain, I might have a way to bypass the jamming!” The wiry Zakdorn moved toward one of the starboard auxiliary consoles. “The Klingons use a super-low-frequency subspace channel to stay in contact with cloaked ships.” He keyed commands into the auxiliary panel at furious speed. “I’ll interlace an SLF signal on a subharmonic fre—”

  “Less talk, Gruhn,” Dax said. “Just make it work.”

  “Aye, sir,” he said, and then he tapped in a few final details. “Channel ready. Try it now.”

  Dax waited while Mirren reestablished contact with the Enterprise. After several more seconds of garbled images and sounds, the visage of Captain Picard snapped into shaky but mostly clear focus. “Captain Dax?”

  “At your service,” Dax said.

  “I thought your ship was in the Gamma Quadrant.”

  She was about to explain, then shook off the impulse. “Long story. We’re coming up fast on the Borg. How can we help?”

  “We need you to be our eyes,” Picard said. He nodded to someone off-screen, then continued, “We’re sending you a set of targeting protocols. After we fire the transphasic torpedoes, you’ll have to arm them and guide them to the target.”

  “Data received,” Mirren said. “Decrypting now.”

  At the auxiliary console, Helkara studied the incoming data, frowned, and then looked up at Dax. “I’ll have to recalibrate the sensors.”

  “How long?” asked Dax.

  “Four minutes,” Kedair said.

  Dax expected bad news as she looked back at Picard, and he didn’t disappoint her. “Our shields will fail in three.”

  “Gruhn,” Dax said to her second officer.

  “I know, three minutes,” Helkara said without looking up.

  “Hang on, Captain,” Dax said. “We’re on our way. Aventine out.” Walking back to her command chair, Dax said to Bowers, “Sam, let’s give the Borg something new to think about for the next three minutes.”