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

by David Mack

  Circling around to stand beside the ensign, Keru said, “Vig, can I see those a minute?”

  Torvig handed Keru the first slender object, and then he grabbed the other and passed it to the burly Trill security chief. Keru held the two stone sticks at their broader ends and felt the weight of them. He paid particular attention to the narrowing of each rod, and the slightly bulbous barrel tip that bulged at the end of that taper.

  “I know what these are,” Keru said. “Step back a little.”

  Keru took a moment to examine the tall object for flat surfaces. He imagined which angles of attack would feel most natural. Cautiously, he reached out and used one of the spikes to tap on an inscribed panel of the obelisk.

  A rich, gonglike tone pealed from inside the black object and resonated in the towering buildings all around him. It sounded as if he’d struck a colossal xylophone with the hammer of the gods, yet all he’d done was tap the thing. He didn’t listen to the instrument’s phenomenally sustained note so much as he felt it vibrating through his flesh and bones.

  When he looked back, Torvig cocked his head to one side. “Perhaps you should strike it again, sir. Someplace different.”

  Choosing another spot, Keru gave it a gingerly tap with one of the stone sticks, and a brighter note rebounded off the cityscape. Feeling bolder as the sound overwhelmed him, he began a slow exploration of the device, and he was astounded to find that, no matter how randomly or arbitrarily he percussed the black statue, he couldn’t sound a discordant note. As he continued, his pace accelerated to a frenzy, and he was all but dancing around the object like a wild shaman, seeking out some new note to play, some new melody to coax into existence.

  It was difficult for him to stop, but he knew that he had to. The instrument’s sounds felt addictive to him. With great effort and more than a touch of remorse, he stopped playing, took a deep breath, and put the obsidian sticks back into their storage slots on the side of the instrument as the last note echoed and faded to silence. He stroked his beard pensively.

  “Why did you stop?” asked Torvig.

  “I felt like I was losing myself in it,” Keru said. “I can’t really explain it. I was taught at the Academy that the effect of sound on the humanoid brain is minimal. Certain infrasonic frequencies can produce anxiety and physical effects, like blurred vision or shortness of breath, but this wasn’t like that. It was … something else.”

  Torvig sounded concerned. “Are you all right, Ranul?”

  “I’m okay, Vig, thanks. I just want to get away from this thing as soon as we can.”

  “Of course,” the engineer said. He pointed himself toward a boulevard that led to the city’s outskirts. “There is an energy surge in this direction.” Before Keru could protest, the Choblik was trotting away, eyes glued to his tricorder screen.

  A few kilometers and minor detours later, Keru caught up to his diminutive friend once again. Torvig was perched on the edge of an overpass, supporting himself with his spindly bionic arms while he leaned over to stare at something of interest below.

  Keru lowered himself to the ground and crawled over beside Torvig to peer into the space beneath the footbridge. Several dozen meters below, a Caeliar hovered above a dark, oval pool of liquid. Globes of the black fluid rose from the pool’s surface without making a ripple of disturbance. In the air, a few meters away from the Caeliar, the dark spheres semisolidified, fused, and were reshaped into something new, which rotated slowly and on more than one axis as more matter accreted on its surface. Although the Caeliar made no motions or sound, and there was no visible connection between it and the object taking shape, Keru was certain that the alien was driving the process, directing its outcome.

  His friend whispered to him, “Isn’t it interesting how they manipulate forms? Their methods are economical and precise.”

  “Just like machines,” Keru said, straining to keep his own voice a whisper.

  “Not quite,” Torvig said. “It’s true that claytronic atoms enable them to mold their bodies and environment, but it would be a mistake to equate the Caeliar with cybernetic organisms such as myself.” After a tense pause, he added, “Or the Borg.”

  Far below, the Caeliar transformed into a shimmering golden mist that fused with the black sculpture and vanished inside of it. The bizarre creation began changing shapes, shifting into ever more unusual configurations while the two Starfleet officers observed its mutations.

  Torvig continued, “The Caeliar and their city are far beyond even our most advanced understandings of cybernetics. They represent a nearly perfect organic-synthetic harmony.”

  The Choblik paused as the golden mist flowed out of the abstract shape below. The Caeliar had turned the piece into something that reminded Keru of a ball of energy with countless ribbons of current dancing across its surface.

  Finishing his thought, Torvig added, “The Caeliar have achieved everything to which my people aspire.”

  Keru grimaced. “Really? Do the Choblik daydream about taking innocent people hostage?”

  That gave the engineer a moment of overtly self-conscious pause. “Perhaps the Caeliar are less than ideal role models.…”

  “Vig, that’s like saying the Gorn are less than ideal vegetarians. Or that Chalnoth make less than ideal nannies.” He pushed himself back from the edge and stood. “Come on, let’s keep moving. We need to finish this recon and get back.”

  Torvig sprang back from the edge of the bridge and fell into step beside Keru. “With proper dietary supplements, a Gorn could subsist on a vegetable-based diet, Ranul.”

  “So not the point, Vig. So not the point.”

  * * *

  Melora Pazlar hadn’t meant to fall asleep. She’d wrapped herself in a wispy sleep-cocoon, intending only to relax while listening to the musical emanations of the crystal sculptures that adorned the high walls of her vertically oriented quarters. She felt safe and comfortable in the microgravity environment, which simulated that of her native Gemworld, but days of overwork and sleep deprivation had finally caught up with her, and she’d found herself chasing multicolored giant insects over a lush dreamscape of ruggedly beautiful lapidary spires.

  She awoke with a shudder and looked down to see someone gazing up and watching her. “Computer! Lights!”

  The glow strips set into the walls gradually brightened, adding fire to her sculptures’ facets while giving her eyes time to adjust to the increasing brightness. When the illumination had increased to roughly fifty percent of full, she recognized her unannounced visitor as Counselor Huilan Sen’kara.

  On a ship packed with a staggering variety of life-forms, the S’ti’ach was one whom Pazlar found especially memorable. His four short arms, two squat legs, and stubby thick tail, coupled with his large-eyed, broad-eared visage, bright blue fur, and sub-meter height, reminded her of a child’s plush animal toy. The illusion was belied, however, by the row of sharp spines on his back—and by his fangs.

  “Sorry to wake you,” he said, sounding insincere.

  She unfastened the safety loop of her cocoon and rolled free of it. Falling slowly, she asked sharply, “What are you doing in my quarters?”

  “I think we need to have a talk,” Huilan said.

  “Do you?” Spreading her arms as if to catch the air, she kept her angry gaze directed squarely at him as she neared the deck. “I don’t recall making an appointment, Counselor. I also don’t remember inviting you in.”

  Her toes touched the carpeted floor, and she let her calf muscles tense just enough to spring her back into the air, where she hovered over Huilan.

  He flattened his spines against his back and pivoted awkwardly, apparently preferring to keep his feet planted on the deck. After surveying the narrow room, he looked back up at Pazlar. “I would invite you to sit down with me, but you don’t seem to have any place to sit.”

  “My people don’t have much use for chairs or anything like them,” she said. “We find floating more comfortable.” With a small push off a
protrusion from one of the bulkheads, she sent herself a few meters higher. “Feel free to come up to my level if you want to keep talking.”

  The S’ti’ach made a sound that was part growl, part purr. “Not my first choice, Commander,” he said. “My species evolved in a high-gravity setting. Neither floating nor flying comes naturally to us.”

  “Fascinating,” Pazlar said. She reached the overhead and halted herself by pressing her fingertips against it and resisting ever so gently, bending at the elbows to absorb her momentum. The artificially generated pull of a few centigees of gravity slowly reeled her back toward the deck. She glared at Huilan. “You came to talk. So talk.”

  The spines on his back bristled back to full attention, betraying his reaction to her brusque tone. “Several of your shipmates have noticed that you spend an inordinate amount of time inside the stellar cartography lab,” he said. “Since the introduction of your holographic avatar, none of your colleagues have seen you in the flesh.”

  “So? That was kind of the whole point.”

  As she touched down in front of him, he asked, “What was?”

  “Being able to go anywhere, anytime, holographically,” she said. “That’s why Xin built it for me—so I could experience life on the ship just like everyone else does.”

  Huilan’s sigh was tainted with mockery. “Well, that’s a relief. And here I thought you were using it to shut yourself off from contact with other people. Silly me.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Pazlar retorted. “Now that I’m free to move around the ship, I’ve had more face time with the rest of the crew than ever before.”

  “At a comfortable remove, no less,” Huilan shot back. “It must be nice. Safe.”

  She backed up half a step from the counselor and launched herself up and away once more. “It is nice,” she said, more defensively than she had meant to. “It’s a great invention. Why do you have to go and make it into something dysfunctional?”

  “That’s not my intention, I assure you.” Huilan watched her with keen attention as she continued to ascend. “And in principle, I don’t disagree. I am happy to see you freed from your constraints. But too much of a good thing can be a cause for concern, Melora.”

  The metal of the overhead was cold against her fingertips as she pushed off it and began another descent. “What’re you trying to say? That I need to spend less time using the holopresence system? Why? I spend most of my time working in stellar cartography, anyway. And clunking through the ship in my armor is hardly my idea of a good time, Doc.”

  “I sympathize,” Huilan said. “But I think you need to stay in practice, so to speak, at living and working in the higher-gravity parts of the ship. If you don’t use those skills, they’ll atrophy—and you know it.”

  She landed a bit more firmly than she had intended, and she let the momentum carry her forward a few steps, toward Huilan. “I’ve heard the spiel before,” she said. “Use it or lose it—blah, blah, blah. But it’s not like I’m barricaded inside my quarters with the gravity off. I get around just fine.”

  “Is that a fact?” The small, blue S’ti’ach gazed at her with an almost feral intensity, as if accusing her with a look.

  She taunted him with a shake of her head and thrust her empty palms upward in frustration. “What?”

  “Where do you store your gravity-assist armature?”

  She pointed toward the custom-built frame on the bulkhead. “Right over—” Her armature wasn’t there. “What the …?”

  “Computer,” Huilan said. “Deactivate holopresence module.” As soon as he’d said it, Pazlar’s quarters vanished, and she found herself standing on the observation platform inside stellar cartography. The walls of the spherical chamber were dark, dull, and blank. Her armature and cane rested against one railing of the catwalk that linked the platform to the entrance portal. “I’m glad you don’t think you’ve blurred the line between illusion and reality,” Huilan continued. “But you’ve been in here for thirty-nine consecutive hours.”

  He turned and shuffled a few paces toward the exit before he stopped, turned back, and added, “If you’d like to talk about this a little more, you know where my office is. But if you come by, do us both a favor—come in person.”

  * * *

  “Here they come,” Tuvok said, activating his tricorder. As he ducked behind a low wall for cover, Vale crouched beside him.

  She peeked over the wall’s edge. Several dozen meters away, a trio of Caeliar were crossing an open courtyard surrounded by flowering trees. Their long, bony limbs moved with more grace than Vale had expected. They walked directly toward a solid wall of dark crystal in a frame of immaculate, polished metal.

  “Watch for a device or a trigger,” Vale whispered.

  Her brown-skinned Vulcan colleague arched one eyebrow into a dubious peak, but he said nothing. Instead, he did as she’d asked and kept his attention on the Caeliar.

  As the three aliens made contact with the wall, it seemed to offer no resistance to their passage. “They walked through it like it was a hologram,” she said.

  Tuvok lifted his tricorder and checked its readings. “Negative, Commander. No sign of holographic projection. But I did pick up a momentary, localized surge in baryonic particles.”

  “And that means …?”

  His expression was exquisitely neutral, but Vale was certain she saw a hint of irritation in Tuvok’s eye. “That something powered by dark energy affected either the particles in the wall, those in the Caeliar, or both.”

  “So that wasn’t just an illusion,” she said. “They really did just walk through a wall.”

  He turned off his tricorder. “In essence, yes.”

  From far behind them came the swift patter of footsteps. Vale looked back and saw the away team’s two security officers, Lieutenant Sortollo and Chief Dennisar, jogging toward her and Tuvok. Their footfalls echoed off the dizzying vertical faces of the Caeliar’s majestic towers. Vale looked askance at Tuvok and remarked, “The acoustics out here would make it damn hard to sneak up on someone.”

  “Indeed,” Tuvok said. “I heard them several minutes ago.”

  She considered chiding him for boasting, but she knew he would say that he was only making a statement of fact. Then he would insinuate that her accusation was rooted in insecurity. You know you’ve meshed with your people when you can have the entire argument without saying a word, Vale mused.

  The two security officers slowed as they drew near to Vale and Tuvok. “Commanders,” said Sortollo. “We finished our recon. What do you want first, the good news or the bad news?”

  “Life is short,” Vale said. “Give me the good news.”

  Sortollo nodded. “The shuttle’s still on the platform, about a hundred meters from the city’s edge,” he said. “So, at least the Caeliar didn’t ditch it at sea.”

  That was something, at least. “And the bad news?”

  An anxious glance passed between Sortollo and Dennisar. The lieutenant replied, “We haven’t found a single door anywhere in the city. Not at ground level, at least. The Caeliar seem to levitate from place to place, or just appear out of nowhere.”

  “And they’re watching us,” said Dennisar. “And listening to everything we say. All the time.”

  Doubt creased Vale’s brow. She asked the Orion, “Are you sure you’re not just being a little paranoid?”

  “I’m sure,” Dennisar said. Looking up and away, he raised his voice and said, “Who’s observing us right now?”

  To Vale’s surprise, a gentle breeze moved past her, warm and pleasant on her skin, and then a slow, gentle swirl of luminescent pinpoints formed behind the two security officers. The glowing motes spread and cohered into the shape of a Caeliar. Within seconds the figure solidified, and then it spoke with a pleasing, feminine voice. “I am Avelos,” she said.

  Tuvok inquired, “Have you been observing us?”

  “Yes,” said Avelos. “For a time.”

  “She isn’t the one
we met,” Sortollo said. “His name was Bednar.” He added, to Avelos, “Are there others watching us?”

  “There are many of us,” Avelos said. “We share the responsibility. Bednar followed two of you here, but once the four of you were together, there was no need for two monitors. So I volunteered to stay and released Bednar.”

  Thinking aloud, Vale said, “There are monitors with all our people, right?”

  “Correct,” said Avelos. “Our intent is not malicious, merely vigilant. The Quorum feels that precautions are prudent, given the outcome of our last dealings with your kind.”

  “Do you refer to the crew of the Columbia?” Tuvok asked.

  The Caeliar turned toward him. “Yes. Members of its crew, whom we’d welcomed as guests here in Axion, resorted to violence in their bid for escape. Their methods caused the deaths of millions of Caeliar, and the loss of one of our cities.”

  Vale cut in, “There are other cities?”

  Avelos’s reply was heavy with resentment. “Not anymore.” She calmed herself before she continued. “The gestalt has made its adjustment to the new paradigm, and your predecessors’ actions, though tragic, ultimately proved necessary in the larger scope of the timeline. However, we have only this city now to defend, and we cannot allow you or your shipmates on Titan to put us at risk. We wish you no harm, but we have learned from experience not to assume the reverse is true.”

  “Most logical,” Tuvok said.

  His reply seemed to satisfy Avelos. She said, “Do you have any other questions you would like to ask me?”

  “How do you walk through walls?” Vale asked.

  “Programmable matter,” Avelos said. “We and the city are composed of the same kind of malleable subatomic machines, and powered by a shared energy field.… I’m afraid I’m not permitted to share any information more detailed than that.”