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

by David Mack

  He turned from the main viewer, walked back to his chair, and sat down. “Helm … go after them.”

  * * *

  The news hit President Bacco like a gut punch.

  “I need to sit down,” she said, easing herself into the chair behind her desk. Outside the massive, curved window that served as a wall of her office in the Palais de la Concorde, Paris was resplendent beneath a blue sky and a golden sun, but Bacco felt as if someone had just turned out all the lights. “It’s an entire fleet of Borg ships?”

  Standing on the other side of Bacco’s desk was Seven of Nine, who cocked her head and replied, “It would be more appropriate to call it an armada.”

  Flanking the ex-Borg security adviser were Bacco’s defense secretary Raisa Shostakova, whose squat frame looked stouter than usual by comparison with Seven’s trim, lanky physique; and Bacco’s trusted chief of staff, Esperanza Piñiero, whose olive complexion and dark hair made Seven’s fair skin and blond hair look almost albino pale.

  Shostakova placed a padd on the desk in front of Bacco. “Long-range sensors have detected as many as seven thousand, four hundred sixty-one Borg vessels moving through our space, as well as in Klingon and Romulan territory.”

  Bacco read the intelligence estimate with growing dismay. “And the expeditionary force …?”

  “Wiped out,” Piñiero said. “Their final transmissions were Maydays from Voyager, the I.K.S. Chorbog, and the Antietam.”

  Pushing another padd across the desk to Bacco, Shostakova added, “The Borg have already started exterminating populations on Beta Thoridor, Adelphous IV, and Devnar IV. We project they’ll launch attacks on Japori II and Gamma Hromi II in four hours, and H’Atoria within six hours.”

  A crushing despair settled on Bacco’s shoulders. She looked to Seven. “How do we stop them?”

  “You can’t,” Seven replied, her absolute certainty cold and unforgiving. “Without the subspace tunnels, there is nowhere you can go that the Borg will not find you.”

  The brutal truth and utter finality of Seven’s words left Bacco with her head in her hands, pondering the possibility that she might have to preside over the end of the Federation.

  “I need the room, everyone,” she said, looking up.

  Piñiero and Shostakova volleyed bemused glances before the chief of staff replied, “Ma’am …?”

  “Just for a few minutes, Esperanza. Please.”

  “Of course, ma’am,” Piñiero said. Protection agents Wexler and Kistler appeared, as stealthy as shadows, behind the three women, and escorted them out of the president’s office. Wexler was the last person out. He nodded to Bacco and shut the door.

  Bacco was too keyed up to remain seated. She stood and paced along the panoramic window-wall, taking in what she belatedly realized might be Earth’s final day.

  As the elected leader of the Federation, there were so many events whose outcomes she could affect or direct that it made her dizzy sometimes to try and think of them all. Trillions of beings depended on her judgment. Countless technological marvels were at her command, tools she could use to shape the present and the future, to change the path of galactic destiny.

  Not one of them was of any use against the Borg.

  She stopped at her desk and pressed her palms flat upon its brilliantly lacquered surface. The true weight of her presidency settled upon her, an Atlas’s burden, and she bowed her head as her late father’s advice echoed in her memory: Everything we do today defines us—because tomorrow might never come.

  Brushing a tear from her cheek, she whispered through a fearful grimace, “You didn’t know how right you were, Dad.”

  20

  William Riker hurried out of the turbolift onto the bridge of Titan, to find Pazlar and Ra-Havreii waiting for him at the engineering console. “What have we got?” asked Riker, walking quickly to join the exhausted, frazzled-looking duo.

  “Just what you asked for,” said Ra-Havreii, pointing at the upper display screen. “We tapped into the Caeliar’s soliton pulses about an hour ago.”

  Pazlar lifted her arm to gesture at a different screen, and Riker noticed only then that the science officer was once again outfitted in her powered, musculature-assistance armature. “It’s taken us since then to decode their signal patterns,” Pazlar said. “We’ll get the descrambled feed in a few seconds.”

  Ra-Havreii smoothed the top of his frost-white mustache with his thumb and forefinger. “Do you want to join their feed in real time or see it from where we first tapped in?”

  “From the beginning,” Riker said. The chief engineer nodded, and then he and Pazlar both keyed in commands as Riker added, “Excellent work, both of you.”

  They accepted the compliment with polite nods, and Pazlar said, “Here it comes.” Garbled blurs and a stutter of sounds resolved quickly into a sharp and chilling spectacle.

  A massive wave of Borg cubes was emerging from an anomaly that resembled a wormhole. The steady stream of black starships coursed like poison into an indigo nebula and rammed through a fleet of hundreds of ships; many of them were Starfleet and Klingon vessels, but there were also dozens of Romulan and Cardassian ships. The Borg crushed them all like children’s toys beneath the boots of angry giants.

  Even after the fleet had been pulverized and scattered into the blue storm, the anomaly continued to hemorrhage Borg ships.

  Riker swallowed and pushed down the sick feeling that was rising from his gut. “Do we have a fix on those coordinates?”

  “Aye, sir,” Pazlar said. “It’s the Azure Nebula.”

  He had seen enough of the slaughter. “Switch to real time,” he said to Ra-Havreii.

  A single tap by Ra-Havreii changed the image to one of quiet desolation. Broken hulls and fragments from a variety of ships drifted into random collisions, driven by the nebula’s chaotic currents.

  “Where’s the anomaly?” asked Riker.

  Radiant warmth filled the bridge behind him, and he noticed an overpowering smell of ozone. “It was a subspace tunnel,” answered a female voice. “And it’s gone.”

  He turned and saw an attractive young woman, ostensibly human and barely out of her teens. Her long, wild mane of black hair was out of proportion to her slender figure, which was garbed in silvery-white drapes of diaphanous fabric that were one trick of the light away from being scandalous. There was a steely quality to her eyes that belied her youthful mien.

  Ensign Rriarr leveled his small sidearm phaser at the woman. “Don’t move,” he said.

  She glanced at the Caitian security officer, and the weapon in his hand turned to dust as she strode forward to meet Riker. “There isn’t much time, Captain, so please listen to me. My name is Erika Hernandez. I used to be the captain of the Earth starship Columbia. And I’ve been a prisoner of the Caeliar for more than eight hundred years.” She waved away his unvoiced question. “I’ll explain later. Right now, answer me this.” Nodding at the science monitor that showed the Azure Nebula, she asked, “Do you want to take your ship there?”

  Riker looked at Ra-Havreii and Pazlar, whose befuddled expressions offered him no guidance. He turned back to Hernandez. “Yes,” he said.

  “I can get you there,” Hernandez said, “using the same device that helped me get here—but only if we leave right now.”

  Lieutenant Sariel Rager swiveled her chair toward the conversation and interjected, “Sir, the away team—”

  Silencing his ops officer with a raised hand, Riker asked Hernandez, “What about my people on the surface?”

  Hernandez shook her head. “They’re all being watched,” she said. “There’s no way to free them without alerting the Caeliar.” She glanced anxiously at the image of the nebula. “They’ve already shut down the subspace tunnels. Any second now they’ll terminate this surveillance wormhole, and once they do there won’t be any way out of here, for any of us—ever.”

  Torn by indecision, Riker clenched his fists. “You don’t understand,” he said. “My wife is down
there.”

  “She’s not going anywhere,” Hernandez replied. “You can always come back to join her.” She looked away, as if listening to something. When she turned back, there was fear in her eyes. “They know I’m missing. It’s now or never, Captain. Call it.”

  Riker stared at the image of the nebula, wrenched between his desire to save his away team and his responsibility to save his ship; between his love for his wife and his oath to the Federation, which was about to face the darkest hour of its history. Acting for the good of the many was his sworn duty, but now it meant abandoning Deanna when she needed him most. No matter what he did, a sacred promise would have to be broken.

  But a decision had to be made. “Take us home,” he said.

  BOOK III

  LOST SOULS

  HISTORIAN’S NOTE

  The main narrative of Lost Souls takes place in February of 2381 (Old Calendar), approximately sixteen months after the events depicted in the movie Star Trek Nemesis. The flashback story occurs circa 4527 B.C.E.

  Death closes all: but something ere the end,

  Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

  Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.

  —Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses

  2381

  1

  It was the hardest decision William Riker had ever made.

  He cast a suspicious glare at Titan’s unexpected visitor, a human-looking young woman with a crazy mane of sable hair and delicate garments that showed more of her body than they covered. She had claimed to be Erika Hernandez, the commanding officer of the Earth Starship Columbia, which had vanished more than two centuries earlier, thousands of light-years from the planet where Titan was now being held prisoner. Her tale seemed implausible, but she had offered to help his ship escape, and so Riker was willing to accept her extraordinary claims on faith … at least, until Titan was safe someplace far from here and he could put her identity to the test.

  Hers had been a proposition he couldn’t refuse, but freeing his ship from the reclusive aliens known as the Caeliar would come at a price: His away team—made up of most of his senior officers, including his wife, his Imzadi, Deanna Troi—would have to be abandoned on the planet’s surface.

  But there was a war raging at home, and above all, he had a duty to protect his ship and defend the Federation. No matter what he did, he was certain his decision would haunt him for a long time to come.

  “Take us home,” Riker said.

  Hernandez snapped into action and took command of the situation. Pointing at the display screen over the science station, she asked curtly, “Who set up this tap on the Caeliar’s subspace aperture?”

  “We did,” answered Commander Xin Ra-Havreii, Titan’s chief engineer, gesturing to himself and the ship’s senior science officer, Lieutenant Commander Melora Pazlar.

  Hernandez stepped to the console and began entering data. The strange young woman’s fingers moved with velocity and delicacy, as if she had mastered the Federation’s newest technology ages earlier. “I need to change your shield specs to protect you from radiation inside the passage,” she said.

  “Our shields already do that,” Ra-Havreii said.

  “No,” Hernandez replied, her flurry of tapping on the console unabated, “you only think they do. Give me a moment.” Her hands came to an abrupt stop. “There.” She turned and snapped at Riker’s acting first officer, Commander Fo Hachesa, “Which station controls onboard systems?”

  Hachesa pointed at ops.

  “Thank you,” she said to the stunned-silent Kobliad. Moving in rapid strides, Hernandez crossed to the forward console and nudged Lieutenant Sariel Rager out of her way. “I’m programming your deflector to create a phase-shifted soliton field. That’ll make it harder for the Caeliar to shift the aperture on us while we’re in transit.” She looked across at Ensign Aili Lavena, the Pacifican flight-control officer. “Be ready to go at your best non-warp speed, as soon as the passage opens. Understood?”

  Lavena nodded quickly, shaking loose air bubbles inside her liquid-atmosphere breathing mask.

  Watching the youthful Hernandez at work, Riker felt superfluous on his own bridge.

  “All right,” Hernandez announced, “I’m about to widen the subspace aperture into a full tunnel. When I do, the Caeliar will try to shut it down. Be warned: This is gonna be a rough ride.” She looked around at the various alien faces on Titan’s bridge. “Everyone ready?” The crew nodded. She met Riker’s gaze. “It’s your ship, Captain. Give the word.”

  Nice of her to remember, Riker thought. He led Hachesa back to their command chairs. They sat down and settled into place. Lifting his chin, Riker said to Hernandez, “The word is given.”

  “And away we go,” Hernandez said. She faced forward, fixed her gaze on the main viewscreen, and lifted her right arm to shoulder height. With her outstretched hand, she seemed to reach toward the darkness, straining to summon something from the void. Then it appeared, like an iris spiraling open in space: a circular tunnel filled with brilliant, pulsing blue and white rings of light, stretching away to infinity.

  Lavena pressed the padd to fire the impulse engines at full power. One moment, Riker heard the hum and felt the vibrations of sublight acceleration through the deck plates; the next, he was clutching his chair’s armrests as the ship slammed to a hard, thunderous halt and threw everyone forward.

  “More power!” cried Hernandez over the alarm klaxons and groaning bulkheads. “I’ll try to break their hold on us!” She closed her eyes, bowed her head, and raised both arms.

  Riker had witnessed some of Deanna’s psychic struggles in the past, and he knew that whatever Hernandez was enduring to free his ship, it had to be worse than he could imagine. “Give it all we’ve got!” he bellowed over the chatter of damage reports pouring in via the ops and tactical consoles.

  Titan lurched forward, then it was inside the pulsating brightness of the subspace tunnel. Lieutenant Rriarr gripped the side of the tactical console with one paw as he reported, “High-level hyperphasic radiation inside the tunnel, Captain. Shields holding.”

  That’s why she had to modify our shields, Riker realized. Otherwise, we’d all be handfuls of dust by now. Bone-rattling blows hammered the ship. “Report!” Riker ordered.

  “Soliton pulses,” Rriarr said. “From behind us.”

  “They’re trying to bend the passage and bring us back to New Erigol,” Hernandez said. “Keep that soliton field up!”

  “Divert nonessential power to the deflector,” Riker said.

  “Belay that, sir,” countered Ra-Havreii. “The gravitational shear inside the tunnel is rising. We have to reinforce the structural integrity field!”

  Hernandez shot back, “Do that, and we’ll lose control of the tunnel. We’ll be taken back to New Erigol!”

  “If we don’t, the ship might be torn in half,” replied the angry Efrosian engineer. Punctuating his point, a console behind him exploded and showered the bridge with stinging debris and quickly fading sparks.

  Falling to her knees, Hernandez kept her arms extended and her hands up, as if she were holding back a titanic weight. “Just a few more seconds!” she cried in a plaintive voice.

  The bluish-white rings of the tunnel began distorting as the black circle of its terminus became visible. “Lieutenant Rager, all available power to the deflector,” Riker said. “That’s an order.” Another round of merciless impacts quaked the ship around him. “Hold her together, folks, we’re almost out!”

  An agonized groan welled up from within Hernandez as the egress point loomed large ahead of Titan. She arched her back and lifted her hands high above her head before unleashing a defiant, primal scream.

  Outside the ship, in the tunnel, a massive ripple like a shimmer of heat radiation coursed ahead of Titan, smoothing the rings back to their perfect, circular dimensions and calming the turbulence. The shockwave rebounded off the exit ring as the Luna-class explorer hurtled through it.

  En
ergy surges flurried the bridge’s consoles, and displays spat out chaotic jumbles. A final, calamitous blast pummeled Titan, and the bridge became as dark as a moonless night. Only the feeble glow of a few tiny status gauges pierced the gloom in the long moments before the emergency lights filled the bridge with a dim, hazy radiance.

  Smoke blanketed the bridge, and the deck sparkled with a fine layer of crystalline dust from demolished companels. The deck was eerily silent; there was no sound of comm chatter, no feedback tones from the computers.

  “Damage report,” Riker said. He surveyed the bridge for anyone able to answer him. He was met by befuddled looks and officers shaking their heads in dismay.

  Ra-Havreii moved from station to station, barely pausing at each one before moving on to the next, growing more agitated every step of the way. When he reached the blank conn, he gave his drooping ivory-white mustache a pensive stroke, then turned to Riker and said, “We’re blacked out, Captain. Main power’s offline, along with communications, computers, and who knows what else. I’ll have to go down to main engineering to get a better look at the problem.”

  “Go ahead,” Riker said. “Power first, then communications.”

  “That was my plan,” replied Ra-Havreii, heading for the turbo-lift. He all but walked into the still-closed doors before making an awkward stop, turning on his heel, and flashing an embarrassed grimace. “No main power, no turbolifts.” He pointed aft. “I’ll just take the emergency ladder.”

  As the chief engineer made his abashed exit, Riker got up and walked to Hernandez’s side. In slow, careful motions, he helped her stand and steady herself. “Are you all right?”

  “I think so,” she said. “That last pulse was a doozy. Guess I didn’t know my own strength.”

  Riker did a double-take. “You caused that final pulse?”