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

by David Mack

  To what Pembleton had decided was the west, an advancing storm spread like a purple-black bruise. “We’d better move if we want to reach low ground in time,” he told Graylock.

  “In time for what?” the engineer said.

  “To build shelters and get fires lit,” Pembleton replied. “Before the storm hits.” Surveying the sparsely wooded slope, he added, “We sure don’t want to get caught in that up here.”

  “Good point,” Graylock said. “Lead us down, Sergeant.”

  The group trudged wearily toward the fjord, far below. In the slightly heavy-feeling gravity, each step gave Pembleton a minor jolt of shin-splint pain.

  He glanced back to confirm that everyone else was faring all right. Crichlow and Mazzetti had the stretcher steadily in hand, and Steinhauer and Graylock were chatting amiably about something in rapid-fire German.

  Along the way, the one resource whose supply exceeded demand was fresh water. According to Graylock’s hand scanner, the snow that blanketed the landscape was remarkably pure and undoubtedly safe to drink. “At least we won’t dehydrate,” he said, trying to muster some optimism.

  “That just means it’ll take us longer to starve to death,” Pembleton replied, in no mood to have his morale boosted.

  Within less than two hours, they were far enough down the slope that other nearby peaks blocked out the feeble sunlight. Crossing into the steel-blue shadows, Pembleton felt the temperature plummet several degrees. His every exhalation filled the air ahead of him with ephemeral plumes of vapor.

  It was late in the day and quickly growing dark by the time they reached the water’s edge. “Steinhauer, help Graylock set up by those big rocks, up on that rise,” Pembleton said. “It’ll give us a break from the wind and keep us dry when the runoff comes down the mountain. Mazzetti, you and I will dig a latrine on the other side. Crichlow, take your rifle and a hand scanner. Hunt for any kind of small animal—bird, fish, mammal, I don’t care. Anything edible.”

  “Right, Sarge,” Crichlow said. He stripped off his backpack, tucked a hand scanner into a leg pocket of his fatigue pants, grabbed his rifle, and stole away into the sparse brush.

  By the time Graylock and the MACOs had finished building the group’s shelter—a tenuous structure of hastily welded scrap-metal supports overlaid by more of the Caeliar’s wonder fabric—the sky was pitch dark. A vicious wind howled like a demon’s choir between the cliffs that bordered the fjord, and the air was heavy with the scent of rain.

  A snapping of twigs and crunching steps on snow turned Pembleton’s head, and he aimed his rifle as a precaution. He lowered it when he recognized Crichlow, who emerged from the brush looking tattered, scratched, and dejected.

  “Nothing out there?” Pembleton asked.

  “Oh, they’re out there,” Crichlow said. The young private met Pembleton’s disappointed gaze and shook his head. “But the little buggers are so spry, I can’t get a bead on ’em.”

  Pembleton fell into step beside Crichlow as they walked toward the shelter. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Tomorrow, switch to snares. See how that goes.”

  “Right, Sarge,” Crichlow said. “Will do.”

  They pushed through the front flaps that served as a door for the shelter. The ground had been covered with large squares of the Caeliar fabric, except for a circle in the middle, where large stones had been piled and heated to a bright red glow that filled the enclosure with smokeless warmth.

  “Tighten your belts, folks,” Pembleton said. “Looks like bark soup for dinner.” Groans of dismay were his reward for honesty. “Look on the bright side,” he continued. “After we enjoy our tasty broth, you’ll all get to sleep, because I’ll take the first watch, till 2100. Mazzetti, second watch, till 0100. Steinhauer, third watch, to 0500. Crichlow, last watch. We’ll rotate the schedule nightly.”

  Mazzetti asked, “Can’t we just set a hand scanner for proximity detection?”

  “We’re trying to save its power cell for things like finding food and figuring out what’s toxic,” said Graylock.

  “Exactly,” Pembleton said. “And Mazzetti? For asking that, you just volunteered for bark-collection detail.”

  * * *

  The bark soup was hot but also bitter, like a raw acorn. Despite having drained his canteen twice in the hour after dinner and spitting furiously, Pembleton still hadn’t expunged the taste from his mouth. Fortunately, I have the rain to keep my mind off it, he observed with dark humor.

  Driven by brutally cold gales, a freezing spray slashed through the night and found every gap in Pembleton’s salvaged-fabric poncho. His phase rifle was slung across his back, and his hands were tucked inside his camouflage fatigue jacket and under his armpits for warmth.

  After Mazzetti had gone out for bark, Graylock had run a scan for any kind of edible plants near the shelter. Nothing had registered on the hand scanner. No berries, fruits, or nuts. Not even simple grasses. Just poisonous fungi and lichens.

  The weather’s only going to get worse, he predicted. The nights’ll get longer, and the cold’ll get deeper. He looked at the mediocre shelter that he and the others now depended on, and he frowned. If that thing survives a winter in this place, it’ll be a miracle.

  A short time before the end of his watch, the downpour was borne away on the shoulders of a biting wind. In minutes, the precipitation abated to a drizzle, and then it stopped. The air cleared, and as a parade of fast-moving clouds transited the sky, he saw the hypnotic radiance of the aurora behind the peaks. Then something beneath it, on the slope of the mountain, caught his attention. Pale glows of movement.

  He fished his binoculars from his fatigues and trained them on the light sources high above his position. Magnified, the details of the scene became clearly visible. The Caeliar had come out from their buried, broken metropolis and were gathering atop a blackened crag that once had been part of its foundation.

  Pembleton wondered what they were up to, so he increased the magnification of the binoculars to its maximum setting and looked again. Then he realized they were gazing back at him.

  They looked different—sickly. There was a spectral quality to them, an otherworldly radiance and a lack of opacity.

  He lowered the binoculars and thought of the millions of Caeliar who had willingly sacrificed themselves to send Mantilis through the subspace passageway, and through time, to this barren place; their city had become a necropolis.

  Lifting the binoculars again, he saw the Caeliar for the ghosts that they’d become, and it filled him with despair.

  I guess we’re not the only ones dying here.

  2381

  3

  “Hail them again, Commander,” Captain Picard said to Miranda Kadohata, the Enterprise’s third-in-command and senior operations officer.

  Her lean, attractive Eurasian countenance hardened with frustration as she worked at her console. “Still no response, sir,” she said, her accent redolent of a Londoner’s inflections.

  Medical and security personnel worked with quiet efficiency around and behind Picard, clearing away the evidence of the ship’s recent pitched battle with Hirogen boarders, two of whom lay dead in the middle of the Enterprise’s bridge. A thin haze of smoke still lingered along the overhead, and its sharp odor masked the stench of spilled blood on the deck.

  On the main viewer, framed by streaks of warp-distorted starlight, was the Vesta-class explorer vessel U.S.S. Aventine. Under the command of Captain Ezri Dax, it was racing at its best possible warp speed toward Earth. They were in futile pursuit of a Borg armada that had, only hours earlier, slipped through a previously unknown—and since collapsed—subspace passage from the Delta Quadrant. Picard feared that at any moment Captain Dax’s crew would activate their ship’s prototype quantum slipstream drive and rush headlong into a suicidal confrontation.

  Lieutenant Jasminder Choudhury, the Enterprise’s chief of security, directed four medical technicians entering from the main turbolift to the Hirogen’s corpses. �
��Get those into stasis,” she said. “We’ll want them for analysis later.”

  “Aye, sir,” said one of the technicians, and the quartet set to work bagging the enormous armored bodies.

  While they worked, another turbolift arrived at the bridge, and four engineers stepped out. They carried tight, tubular bundles that unrolled to reveal long sheets covered with tools tucked into fabric loops and magnetically sealed pockets. In moments, the engineers all were at work, repairing ruptured duty consoles and bulkhead-mounted companels.

  Commander Worf finished a hushed conference with junior tactical officer Ensign Aneta Šmrhová and returned to the command chairs to take his seat next to Picard’s. Speaking at a discreet volume, he said, “Sensor reports confirmed, Captain. There are more than seven thousand Borg cubes deployed into Federation, Klingon, and Romulan territory. Several targets have already been engaged.”

  “Thank you, Number One,” Picard said, though he was anything but grateful for the update. He raised his voice and asked the flight controller, “Mister Weinrib, time to intercept?”

  “Actually, sir, the Aventine’s lead is increasing,” Weinrib said. “They’re now point-eight-five past our top rated speed.”

  Picard admired the sleek lines of the Aventine as it slipped farther away from the Enterprise. He was almost ready to abandon hope of reasoning with Dax when Kadohata swiveled her chair around from ops to report, “Aventine is responding, sir.”

  “On-screen,” Picard said.

  Captain Dax’s face appeared on the main viewer. “Changed your mind about joining us, Captain?”

  “Far from it,” Picard said, rising from his chair and walking forward. “I urge you to reconsider this rash action.”

  The young, dark-haired Trill woman seethed. “The Federation’s under attack,” she said. “We have to defend it.”

  “We will,” Picard said. “But not like this. Sacrificing your ship and your crew in this manner serves no purpose. Going into battle against great odds can be brave or noble—but going into battle without a plan is worse than futile, it’s wasteful.”

  She heaved an angry sigh, and he sensed her frustration, her desire to do anything other than stand and wait. “So, what do you propose we do?”

  “We’ll contact Starfleet Command and request new orders,” he said. “They may not even be aware that our ships are still in service after the loss of the expeditionary force.”

  Dax seemed surprised by Picard’s suggestion. “Contact Starfleet Command? No offense, Captain, but that’s not exactly the answer I expected, given your reputation.”

  “I’ll admit that when my orders have contradicted common sense, morality, or the law, I have followed my conscience,” Picard said. “But at the moment, Captain, we haven’t any orders at all—and I think we at least ought to see if Starfleet knows where it needs us before we commit ourselves to a potentially fatal course.”

  Dax relaxed her shoulders. “I suppose it can’t hurt to ask,” she said.

  “Then might I suggest we drop out of warp?” Picard said. “At least until such time as we know where we ought to go?”

  She narrowed her gaze for a moment, and then she nodded to someone off-screen. “We’re returning to impulse,” she said. “Can you patch me in when you’re ready to talk to Starfleet?”

  “Of course,” Picard said. “Enterprise out.” The screen switched back to the exterior view of the receding Aventine.

  Picard nodded to Worf, who said to Weinrib, “Match their speed and heading.” The conn officer nodded his confirmation.

  On the viewscreen, the streaks of light shrank back to gleaming points as the Aventine and the Enterprise returned to normal maneuvering speeds.

  Another guarded victory for common sense, Picard mused. “Commander Kadohata, raise Starfleet Command on any secure channel, priority one.”

  “Aye, sir,” Kadohata replied.

  He turned toward his ready room. “I’ll take it in my—” He stopped in midstep and midsentence as he saw the burned and smoke-scarred interior of his office, which had been set ablaze during the assault by the Hirogen hunting pack. Picard frowned. The sight of his flame-scoured sanctum resurrected unpleasant memories he’d hoped were long buried.

  Time is the fire in which we burn.

  Looking back at Kadohata, he said, “I’ll take it in the observation lounge, Commander.” He walked to the aft starboard portal as he added, “Commander Worf, you have the bridge.”

  4

  “Battle stations!” roared Captain Krogan. The bridge lights snapped to full brightness as the I.K.S. veScharg’a dropped to impulse one million qelI’qams from the Klingon world Morska. Following close behind the veScharg’a was its battle partner, the Qang-class heavy cruiser Sturka.

  A firestorm of disruptor blasts raged up from the planet’s surface and hammered the two Borg cubes in orbit. The impacts seemed to have no effect on the cubes except to silhouette them and give them blinding crimson halos. Then the Borg returned fire and wrought blazing emerald scars across the planet’s surface.

  Krogan’s first officer, Falgar, bellowed, “Raise shields! Arm weapons! Helm, set attack pattern ya’DIchqa.”

  “Ten seconds to Borg firing range,” answered the helmsman.

  “All reserve power to shields,” Falgar ordered.

  Time to find out if Starfleet’s secret torpedoes work for us. Krogan watched the Borg cubes grow larger on his viewscreen. His foes would have several seconds of advantage over his Vor’cha-class attack cruiser, whose effective firing range was a few hundred thousand qelI’qams shorter than that of the Borg cubes. The veScharg’a’s goal was to survive the Borg’s initial barrage and get close enough to target the cubes with the transphasic torpedo, which Admiral Jellico of Starfleet had just ordered to be distributed to ships of the Klingon Defense Force.

  “The Borg are firing,” Falgar said, sounding perfectly calm. Then explosions shook the battle cruiser with the ferocity of Fek’lhr himself. The bright battle lights flickered. Fire and sparks erupted from aft duty stations, and the stink of burnt hair assaulted Krogan’s nostrils.

  Qonqar, the tactical officer, shouted over the clamor, “Weapons locked!”

  Krogan slammed a fist on the arm of his chair as he pointed at the Borg cubes on the screen. “Fire!”

  A trio of blue bolts shot forth, spiraling erratically through the Borg’s defensive batteries. As they closed on target, Falgar called out, “Helm! Break to starboard! Qonqar, all power to port shields!”

  More blasts shook the veScharg’a. Krogan reveled as he watched the viewer and saw the aft-angle view of the torpedoes hitting home and blasting one Borg cube to pieces in a sapphire flash. As the blue fire cloud dissipated into the vacuum of space, another cerulean blast filled the starscape behind it, as the second Borg cube was annihilated.

  The bridge officers cheered and roared at their victory. Krogan permitted himself a satisfied growl and a nod of his head. It is a good day to die … for my enemies.

  The warriors’ celebrations were ended by the shrilling of an incoming subspace message. Communications officer Valk covered his in-ear transceiver for a moment, then looked up at Krogan. “Signal from General Klag.”

  “On-screen,” Krogan said, lifting his chin to project pride and confidence to his commanding officer.

  The visage of General Klag, commander of the Fifth Fleet, filled the viewscreen. “Report,” said the general, who was now also hailed as a Hero of the Empire.

  “Our foes are vanquished,” Krogan said.

  “Excellent,” Klag said. “Your vessel is needed at a new battle. What is your status?”

  Krogan replied, “Minor damage but still battle-ready.”

  Klag nodded, and then he asked, “What of the Sturka?”

  Qonqar routed an after-action report from the Sturka to Krogan’s command monitor. “Captain K’Draq reports they’ve taken heavy damage,” Krogan said, reviewing the details.

  The general’s brow crease
d beneath his scowl. “We need every ship. Can they continue?”

  “Doubtful,” Krogan said. “They’ve lost warp drive.”

  “Leave them, then,” Klag said. “Rendezvous with the fleet in three hours, at the coordinates I’m sending you now.”

  At a glance, Krogan knew that the meeting point lay on a direct line between the Azure Nebula, source of the Borg scourge, and the Klingon homeworld. “The Borg are coming for Qo’noS, then,” he said.

  “If they do, they come to die,” Klag said with bold eagerness. “Get under way now. That is an order. Klag out.”

  The screen returned to the wounded orb of Morska and the smoldering, battered hull of the Sturka, adrift in space. Krogan relayed the rendezvous coordinates to the helmsman’s console. “Set a new course,” he said. “Maximum warp. Go.” Stars swept across the screen and then distorted into streaks as the veScharg’a jumped to warp.

  Though Krogan would never say so—not to his crew, to his family, or to his superiors—he knew that it had been sheer luck that had preserved his ship even as the Sturka had fallen to the Borg. And if there was one truth that every warrior knew, it was that no one’s luck lasted forever.

  * * *

  Chancellor Martok stepped off the transporter padd and was glad to be back aboard his flagship, the I.K.S. Sword of Kahless. General Goluk, a high-ranking member of the Order of the Bat’leth and the commander of Martok’s venerated Ninth Fleet, gave him a nod of greeting. “Qapla’, Chancellor.”

  In his cutting growl of a voice, Martok replied, “Qapla’, General. Report.” He marched out of the transporter room, in a hurry to reach the bridge.

  The gray-bearded general followed him and said, “Khitomer and Beta Thoridor have fallen. Beta Lankal and the Mempa system are under attack, as are several dozen smaller colonies.”

  “And Morska?”

  “Defended by the Sturka and the veScharg’a,” Goluk said. “The Borg are also laying siege to Rura Penthe.”