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

by David Mack

  Sortollo visibly tensed. “Hang on a second—you and your people … are all machines?”

  “We prefer to think of ourselves as synthetic life-forms. Our catoms mimic much of our original biology, in both form and function. Though your scanners probably don’t see us as organic beings, from our perspective, life looks and feels as it ever did. We are as we were … and as we shall remain.”

  The four Starfleet personnel stood in silence and absorbed Avelos’s information. Finally, Vale looked at her and said, “Thanks. You can go back to being a breeze or whatever it is you do. We’d like the illusion of a little bit of privacy.”

  “As you wish,” Avelos replied. She became semitransparent, and then she grew blurry and faded away in a balmy rush of air.

  Vale looked at Tuvok. “Time for Plan B.”

  “I was not aware that we had a Plan B.”

  “We don’t,” she said. “But we’d better get one. Fast.”

  * * *

  Deanna Troi leaned against the balcony wall, her weight on both her hands. From her lofty vantage point she gazed beyond the spires of Axion into the distance, out across fog-draped tropical forests and low clouds dragging dark rain shadows.

  She heard the air displaced behind her as much as she felt it against her back, and she wasn’t surprised to hear Erika Hernandez’s voice. “The Quorum will meet with you soon,” she said. “I should warn you now not to expect much. The Caeliar tend to resist change—and suggestions.”

  Troi didn’t turn around. Instead, she swiveled her head just enough to catch sight of Hernandez over her shoulder. “We just want to talk to them,” Troi said.

  Behind her unannounced visitor, Dr. Ree sauntered out of the corridor that led to the away team’s respective private quarters. The therapodian physician flicked his forked tongue at Hernandez, no doubt tasting the woman’s scent on the air. “I heard voices,” he said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  Hernandez tilted her head in a birdlike manner as she stared at Ree. “May I ask what your species is called?”

  “Pahkwa-thanh,” Ree said.

  The youthful brunette nodded. “Humanity hadn’t met any life-forms like yours when I was a starship captain. If it’s not too forward of me, I think yours is a very handsome species.”

  “Well, we’ve always thought so,” Ree replied, sauntering closer to the two women. “But it’s nice of you to say.” He stopped at a large, rough-textured boulder, which sat beneath a square light fixture that bathed it in a warm, white radiance. In a graceful hop, he was atop the beige-hued rock, and he stretched out to sun himself. “Don’t mind me,” he said.

  “The Caeliar certainly saw to our comfort,” Troi said, in a derogatory tone.

  Hernandez didn’t take the bait. She joined Troi on the balcony and stood forward against the low wall, her fingertips resting lightly on its ledge. “They try to be good hosts.”

  A fleeting stab of pain swirled inside Troi’s abdomen. She masked her profound discomfort with an intensity of anger she didn’t really feel. “Don’t you mean ‘jailers’?”

  “My landing party and I felt much the same way when we first came here. Some of us got over it. Some didn’t.”

  The pain faded slightly, and Troi regained more of her emotional control. She didn’t want to give Hernandez or the Caeliar any more information than she had to about her condition, but she was even more intent on concealing her symptoms from Dr. Ree and Commander Vale until the mission was done. The last thing she wanted was to be relieved of duty and treated like a casualty. “You’ve been living with the Caeliar for quite some time,” she said. “Do they trust you?”

  “To a point,” Hernandez replied. “I have more liberties than you do, but I’m still subject to many restrictions.”

  Troi’s half-Betazoid empathic skills sensed the veracity of Hernandez’s words. It was a relief to Troi that whatever change had imbued Hernandez with nigh-eternal youth and rendered her biology unrecognizable to the tricorders had not hampered Troi’s ability to detect her emotions. She asked Hernandez, “Have you ever tried to defy them?”

  The question colored Hernandez’s mood with regret and contempt. “Many times,” she said. “More than I could count.”

  “And how did the Caeliar respond?”

  Hernandez cast a sly look at Troi. “Gauging your own risk before you challenge them?”

  “I just want a sense of what kind of civilization they’ve created. Their values, their beliefs … their point of view.”

  Now it was Hernandez’s turn to stare out across the mist-dappled tropical mountain slopes as Axion roamed the skies. Troi watched the sunset paint the sky amber and scarlet along the horizon for a few minutes while Hernandez pondered her query. The sweet, refreshing scent of rain and earthy perfumes from the jungle below reached Troi in a soft, humid upswell.

  “The Caeliar,” Hernandez said at last, “are very often just what they seem to be: reclusive xenophobes with a frightening amount of raw power. They can be distrustful and stubborn.”

  Everything she’d said had the ring of truth, as far as Troi’s empathy could tell. “How do they punish disobedience?”

  “They don’t,” Hernandez said. “All they ever do is stop the action that bothers them and then lecture you about why it’s in your best interest to do as they say.”

  “And they don’t resort to threats or punitive measures?”

  Hernandez shook her head. “Not on a personal level. They’re pacifists—they won’t kill, and they hate violence. Besides, even if they weren’t, they’d hardly need to use force to get their way. You’ve barely seen a fraction of what they can really do.” In a more ominous timbre, she added, “Trust me, it’s a waste of time butting heads with them. You won’t win. Ever.”

  There wasn’t a single trace of deception or exaggeration that Troi could sense behind Hernandez’s words—just a deep and profound despair, tinged with bitterness. Troi decided to try and coax something more substantial from her hostess. “You say they’re nonviolent. But are they fair?”

  “They can be.” A sullen mood took hold of Hernandez, and Troi felt the other woman’s resentment being stoked by her reminiscences. “Though I have to admit … in recent centuries, their decisions haven’t always been as reasonable as they’d like to think. Some of their decrees have seemed … arbitrary.”

  Pushing a bit more, Troi asked, “Did they seem malicious?”

  “No, just selfish.”

  “I see.” Another pang of sickly discomfort made Troi wince. Hernandez didn’t seem to notice, and a glance back at the boulder confirmed that Ree’s eyes were still closed while he basked in his artificial sunlight. To Hernandez, Troi continued, “I’ll just have to hope I catch the Quorum in a good mood.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Hernandez said. “Visitors always make them edgy.” She turned as if to leave, then she stopped. “I’ll be back to escort you to the Quorum hall when they’re ready for you. In the meantime, can I ask you a favor?”

  Fighting to suppress the sick feeling in her stomach and keep her poker face steady, Troi replied, “It depends.”

  “Would it bother you if I stopped pretending not to have abilities that you’ve already seen me use?” She looked back across the residence’s open great room. “I could use the pod lift to come and go if it makes you feel better, but …”

  Troi gave her permission with a sweep of her arm. “Be my guest.”

  “Thanks,” Hernandez said. She walked to the railing, rolled her hips over the low barrier with a gymnast’s grace, and pushed away from the edge into open air. Troi peeked over the wall and watched Hernandez make her slow descent, arms wide, her diaphanous raiment and sable hair billowing in an updraft.

  Watching her float to the ground, Troi envied Hernandez’s freedom … until she remembered that, for all her powers and privileges, Hernandez was as much a prisoner as she was.

  1525–1573

  9

  The years had flowed like water, o
ne into the next, until Erika Hernandez no longer knew where one ended and another began.

  Axion was a mountain moving through an ocean of night. Its slow passage of the void between stars was motivated in part by the Caeliar’s obsessive need to conceal their presence from the galaxy at large, which necessitated a reduced energy signature. Hernandez’s work with Inyx had also given her reason to suspect another cause for their languor: they had no idea where to go.

  She stood half a meter behind Inyx in the center of the vast hexagon that she had nicknamed the Star Chamber. The alien scientist’s bony limbs were doubled over on themselves as he squatted above a holographic representation of a star system on the black, nonreflective floor. He teased it with his tendril-fingers. Smoky symbols curled up and away from the tiny, orange sun-sphere. “Stable,” Inyx declared. “Energy output … adequate.”

  “What about the planets?” asked Hernandez, who waited to enter notations on a sleek, paper-thin polymer tablet.

  Inyx enlarged the system as he pushed it high above their heads. Six worlds formed. “Four iron-cored inner planets, two gas giants,” Inyx said. “One planet in the habitable zone. Mark this one for further investigation. System D-599.”

  “I’m naming it Xibalba,” Hernandez said.

  “You may name it anything you wish, provided you log it in the catalog under the heading System D-599.” The simulated star system overhead dissolved and vanished. Inyx strolled toward some other speck of light, several meters away.

  Hernandez followed him as she jotted the system’s bland catalog designation on the tablet and added her more colorful appellation as a footnote. “That’s the second possibility you’ve found this month,” she said. “You’re on a roll.” Her estimate of time’s passage was approximate at best. There were no days in Axion, no changing of seasons, no moon to wax and wane like a celestial timepiece. Just the enduring darkness.

  “This latest discovery was most unexpected,” Inyx said. “Unfortunately, it’s also quite distant. It will be some time before we can reach that sector.”

  Carefully excising all eagerness from her voice, Hernandez said, “You could build a scout vessel and send a small team to survey the system.”

  Without deigning to look back, Inyx replied, “I presume you would volunteer for that survey? And that your three companions would be ideal assistants?”

  “It is the sort of mission we were trained for.”

  As she caught up to Inyx and walked beside him on his left, he asked, “What do you think are the odds that the Quorum will give you its permission for such an endeavor?”

  “Zero,” she said as they passed over the image of a bright stellar cluster on the floor. “Because you won’t even present it to them as an option.”

  “Correct,” he said. “I’m glad you’ve learned that much.”

  “I told you: I’m a quick study.”

  “Yes, you have absorbed a great deal of information more quickly than I’d expected,” Inyx said. “Though I still have much to teach you, I must admit I’ve enjoyed your enthusiasm … and your stories. You’ve led a colorful life for one so young.”

  “Kind of you to say,” she said, appreciating his flattery.

  He slowed, stopped, reached up, and pulled down a yellow marble of fire from high overhead. “I hope you can sustain your zeal,” he said. “It would make the next several decades far more pleasant for all of us.”

  It took her a few seconds to let herself hear what he said, and even then she was still somewhat in denial. “Decades?”

  “Yes,” Inyx said. “Many of these candidate systems are quite distant from one another. Given the limitations on our power output, and the need to avoid detection in regions where contact with starfaring races would be a risk, it will take some time for us to complete all our surveys.”

  Hernandez felt stunned. She had been mentally prepared to spend a few years, or even several years, aiding the Caeliar in their search for a new homeworld. Decades were another matter.

  Inyx extracted more smoke-symbols from the burning dot that hovered between his undulating tendrils. After the vaporlike sigils vanished into his mottled skin, he released the tiny orb, which drifted upward, back toward the ceiling. “Not enough essential elements,” he said. “It also had only one terrestrial planet, which was too close to the star to be habitable.” He moved on, oblivious of Hernandez’s state of shock.

  “I have a question,” she said.

  He halted and turned toward her. “Ask.”

  “If we found a habitable world, but in a star system that didn’t suit your more exotic needs, would the Quorum consider letting me and my companions settle there, in exile?”

  The tubelike air sacs that ran from Inyx’s neck to his chest swelled and then sagged, a Caeliar equivalent to a heavy sigh. “I suspect they would refuse such a request,” he said. “There would always be the risk, once you left our custody, that another starfaring species might rescue you, or find you when it came to colonize. Even the discovery of your remains, long after your demise, might raise unfortunate questions. And then our security would be in peril.”

  “Well, what about displacing us?” she said. “Your Quorum threatened to do it before—fling us to an Earthlike planet in some distant galaxy. Why not do that now?”

  He seemed caught off guard. “We’d have to expend a great deal of energy to move you so far. Because we are presently unshielded, doing so would attract significant attention to us. Someone would almost certainly investigate.”

  “All right,” she said, unwilling to surrender. “Then leave us here and move yourselves to another galaxy, one with no one else in it. Then you can have all the privacy you want.”

  “Why do you have this sudden need to get out of Axion?”

  The rusty wire that held the cork on her bottled-up anger finally broke. “There’s nothing sudden about it, Inyx! I’ve wanted out of this place since the moment I got here! I brought my crew here to get help, not become inmates.” She paced away from him, then pivoted back. “Human beings aren’t meant to live their whole lives in space,” she said. “We need a break once in a while. Some fresh air, a walk on the grass, a swim in the ocean. And now you tell me I can look forward to several more decades of night in this wandering ghost town? I’m not sure I can take that, Inyx. I’m not sure my friends can take it.”

  He sounded genuinely contrite. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how hostile this environment must seem to you.” He looked around at the Star Chamber as he continued, “Holographic simulation is a fairly simple art. Perhaps our chief architect, Edrin, could construct some therapeutic artificial environments for you.”

  “Holograms?” she replied, unconvinced. “I know they say a picture’s worth a thousand words, but I doubt a trick of the light can stand in for a night on the beach in Cancún or a day spent rock-climbing in Clark Canyon.”

  “You may be surprised,” was Inyx’s last word on the subject. And despite his permanent frown and unreadable body language, Hernandez was certain that something in Inyx’s tone rang unmistakably of mischief in the making.

  * * *

  Johanna Metzger sat slumped in her chair, with her head tilted over the back so she could stare straight upward. “Is it my imagination,” she asked, “or are there a lot less stars than there used to be?”

  Veronica Fletcher stopped poking at what felt like her millionth plate of bland Caeliar vegetable gruel and looked up at the sky above their courtyard. “That’s been happening for a while now,” she said. “According to Erika, it’s ’cause the Caeliar moved the city a few thousand light-years above the galactic plane. Most of what we’re seeing from here are close globular clusters and other galaxies.”

  “They never do anything the easy way, do they?”

  Pushing her plate aside, Fletcher replied, “Why would they, when they have all the time in the universe?” She reached up and released her golden hair from the French knot that kept it from getting in her way. It fell the entire leng
th of her back, to her waist. Metzger had refused to indulge in such extravagances and had kept her hair shorn to a utilitarian crew cut.

  The doctor stiffened as Erika Hernandez walked through the open archway into the courtyard and quipped, “I’m home.”

  Metzger got up and avoided contact with Hernandez, as usual. “I have to go check on Sidra,” she said. “Find out if she felt like eating any of her dinner tonight.”

  Hernandez eyed Metzger’s exit with a weary stare, but she said nothing. In the long, dark blur of indistinguishable days and nights, the reasons behind grudges and resentments had long since been lost. The four women, in Fletcher’s opinion, were all stuck in a loop, going over the same ground from moment to moment and year to year. Sidra had taken refuge in her psychological meltdown; Metzger had made a fortress of her anger and resentment; Hernandez had submerged into work, as always; and Fletcher sat on the sidelines, trying and failing to think of a way to quit this pointless game.

  She watched Hernandez sit down across from her and stir the vegetable paste in the ceramic pot that sat on the table between them. “Another failed attempt at soup?” the captain asked. “Why don’t they ever listen to us and put in more water?”

  “Because we’re just humans,” Fletcher griped. “What the hell could we possibly know about cooking our own meals?” She tilted her head back and gazed at the sparse starfield. “Find any good planets today?”

  Hernandez shook her head. “We thought we did, but when we looked closer we picked up radio signals.”

  “Off-limits, then,” Fletcher replied.

  “Exactly. Another day, another system off the list.” She picked up a clean bowl and spooned some greenish vegetable goop into it. “How was your day? Do anything interesting?”

  “I finished my novel.”

  “As in, you finished a first draft? Or as in, it’s done?”

  “Well,” Fletcher replied with a shrug, “great works of art are never finished, only abandoned.”

  “I see,” Hernandez said, lifting a spoonful of accidentally condensed soup. “Glad you’re so modest about it.” As soon as she had the spoon in her mouth, she winced. Then, with effort, she swallowed. “So,” she continued, twisting her tongue in disgust, “what is this great work of art?”