A deep, long hiss burst from S’linth, forcing every Resaurian in hearing to puff out his neck muscles in a reflexive defense. Hiding in the nest when you don’t like what your eyes lay plain before you. The humans knew nothing of Resaurian young and could not have replicated such a fine forgery. All they had said had been the truth from the beginning.
With a suddenness he’d become known for on his rise to captaincy, S’linth made his decision. Though it felt like shifting the weight of the nest, he moved forward and spoke words he never believed it would be possible to say. “No, Councilman, you will do no such thing.”
“What?” Suliss slithered forward. “How dare—”
S’linth whipped his head in the nictitator’s direction, bared his fangs, and piled out the hatred and rage that had built hour after hour. The spitting hiss caused the nictitator to stumble backward and cower against the wall; he had no wish to accept a challenge he would lose.
“Security, remove this unproductive from my bridge immediately.” He turned away before watching for a response; he did not doubt his crew.
Sha’a did not realize when he’d lost. “So, you betray me. After all I’ve done. You would violate every tradition of our people. Betray them for aliens.” At a genetic level, the voice of the councilman pulled at his loyalties. However, S’linth had witnessed too much for his conscious brain to give in to such directives without question anymore. He no longer felt under the command of the councilman.
“Security, remove Sha’a from my bridge as well. Keep them in separate holding cells until we return to the nest.” He turned away without once acknowledging Sha’a. To do so would only give some validation and leave a crack open for his crew to doubt.
With the most difficult part past, S’linth turned back toward the viewscreen to find wide eyes and open mouths on the aliens; he couldn’t be sure what it meant, but at this point it didn’t matter.
“Captain, I believe you hailed me with an offer?”
The captain slowly nodded, closing his mouth.
“If you will trust me with your plans, I swear, we will help bring our children home.”
Chapter
12
Sonya Gomez stepped through, onto the bridge of the da Vinci, before the lift doors had fully whisked open. Bart Faulwell and Carol Abramowitz met her on the upper landing. Both of them threw protocol out the airlock and folded her into an awkward three-way hug. “Welcome home,” Bart whispered. His breath was warm against the side of her face, and smelled of apples.
Sonya smiled thinly. “Good to be back,” she told them both. Even if this wasn’t over, it did feel good to have the familiar feel of the da Vinci around her again. A swaying feeling of vertigo washed over her, but she held her footing. “You might want to clear the bridge,” she said.
“We were on our way out,” Carol told her. She broke away first, headed for the lift. Bart followed after a final, brotherly squeeze on both arms.
The bridge felt tense, but together in a way Sonya had never felt on the station, with warring factions and secrets being kept. Joanne Piotrowski nodded a greeting from tactical. Even Tev’s natural surliness seemed light by comparison to what she had lived through, though he did not welcome her back with the same enthusiasm that her friends had. He merely grunted at her arrival.
David Gold was no more forthcoming with his feelings. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Of course, with the main viewer open onto the bridge of the Dutiful Burden, she expected her captain to maintain a respectful distance. The three-way alliance he’d put together was built on intimidation and the threat of imminent death for all concerned. He did shift around in his seat, looking back at her. “Keep it smooth, Gomez,” he said, sotto voce. “Not too many bumps.” And he tipped her a casual wink.
The confidence in his gaze, regardless of what he might feel inside, warmed her. “Yes, sir.”
She moved to the main panel, pulled up readings on the Resaurian station, the Dutiful Burden, and the da Vinci’s position within the black hole. A small, green candy sat on the edge of her lower panel, still in its twist of wrapper. From the side, a hand covered in coarse, brown hair crept in to pluck the candy from its resting spot.
“That’s not exactly regulation,” she said, seeing in her peripheral vision that the Tellarite still stood there.
“Faulwell,” Tev said, as if that explained everything. In a way, it did. “He rode across the photon sphere on the bridge.”
She glanced sidelong at Tev. Most times, the stodgy engineer would have demanded nonessential personnel to stand clear of the work areas. Then again, there had likely been a great deal more to worry about than a quiet cryptographer and a cultural specialist standing nearby. “What was it like?” she asked. She did not need to specify, Sonya knew. Not with Tev.
“Magnificent.” He nearly let it rest with that, then, “You should have been here to see it.”
Sonya nodded, sensing that the Tellarite had just offered her a very left-handed compliment. “I’ll see it on the way out,” she told him. “Ready?”
“Always, Commander.” He moved back to the science station, unwrapped his candy, and popped it into his mouth.
Sonya checked in with Stevens, who continued to monitor the power systems aboard the station, and Pattie, standing by aboard the station bridge. Both reported they were as ready as they could be. “All hands report ready to go, Captain.”
“Can we pull anyone else off first?” Gold asked, a measure of concern laced into the request.
“Fabian can’t leave the reactor distribution venues, in case new calibrations become necessary. Pattie insisted on staying behind as well. This three-way anchor is our weak link, especially given the station’s sheer bulk. She’ll make it work, sir.” She didn’t bother to tell Gold that Corsi was unlikely to leave the team unattended on a station surrounded by potential hostiles without anything short of a direct order, and perhaps not even then, and Rennan was backing up his superior.
“Make it happen, Gomez.”
Sonya passed along her orders, and Tev loosened the da Vinci’s grasp on the station just enough to allow the vessel to climb against the Demon’s intense gravitational pull. Using his “bootstrapping” technique, he punched one dekyon beam into the curved wall of space-time, then another farther up, and slowly merged the two. The extra pull allowed the da Vinci to struggle along several dozen kilometers.
“Hang on, Tev. Dutiful Burden, go.”
The Resaurian vessel performed the exact same wall-climbing maneuver while the da Vinci anchored the station in place. Once they were at an equal position, the anchor was tightened and the station slowly dredged up from the Demon’s maw.
It was working!
This time she gave the Resaurian vessel the lead position, sending them scaling up the warped space-time ledge. Like a pair of rock climbers hauling an injured partner up a cliff face, first the Burden edged its way back toward normal space, then the da Vinci, and again the station levered itself up once both vessels had hammered in their dekyon pitons.
At one point during its turn at hauling, a gravimetric wave broke over the bow of the da Vinci. The small Saber-class vessel weathered it as though it had been a large sneaker wave crashing over the prow of an old ocean-going vessel; the ship gave a shake and a roll, and then burst forward with an extra kick from the engines.
At one-point-four-five Schwarzschild radii the raw gravitational force had lessened to the equivalent of twelve billion Earth-gravities. Lessened! Sonya almost laughed at such an idea. The gravitational tide between vessels and station was approximately two hundred million gravities. The da Vinci groaned and labored against the pull, but up the station came.
“Coming up on the photon sphere,” Tev called out.
Sonya spared her engineer’s curiosity only ten seconds, glancing between her monitors and the main viewscreen. She saw the Einstein Rings bulge out from the compacted starscape. The troika of vessels now hung on to the division between eternal night and
a universe of possibilities.
Another gravimetric wave slammed into them, bucking the ship.
The Demon was reluctant to release its prey.
“Not my ship,” Gold muttered, his deep voice carrying across the bridge. “Not today.”
Slowly, painfully, the starscape crawled down toward the bottom of the viewscreen. Sonya watched, coordinated, and worried. The irony did not escape her. Starfaring vessels, each capable of traveling across light-years in short order, clawing and scrabbling for simple kilometers. Ten here. Twenty there.
At three complete Schwarzschild radii, an impressive nine hundred kilometers from the singularity’s center, she began to breathe easier. Tension eased from her shoulders, and she dry-swallowed some life back into her throat.
At five radii the ships had shed two orders of magnitude in gravitational pull, and she lengthened each leg of the journey, allowing the da Vinci and Dutiful Burden to eat away a full hundred kilometers on each stride, then a thousand. Soon they were able to drop the dekyon beams and proceed under normal propulsion, fighting their way past an orbit of one thousand kilometers, a simple fifteen thousand gravities. Gold passed the word to bring his own people back from the station, and then shifted screens aft.
A dark circle of night shrank from the da Vinci as stars reclaimed the sky. And from out of the Demon’s mouth came the Resaurian station.
“Gravitational pull falling past one hundred fifty G’s,” Sonya reported at three million kilometers’ distance from the Demon. Both vessels were under full impulse, racing away, the danger past. She used the back of her sleeve to pat the sweat from her brow. “Let’s not do that again anytime soon, please.”
“No promises,” Gold said, but he was grinning ear to ear. “Not in the S.C.E. Wong, put us in a very distant orbit around the Demon, please.” He thumbed open an all-hands circuit. “Stand down from alert, investigate all spaces and make damage control reports to the bridge.” To his main bridge crew he said, “Rest easy, everyone.”
Haznedl slapped Wong on the shoulder. Piotrowski kept to herself at first, though she whooped a moment later when Corsi led Konya and Stevens out of the turbolift.
“Everything’s in okay shape on the station,” Stevens reported. “A bit bouncy, but we made it through.”
“Lot of engineers and extra security crowding my bridge,” Gold complained with a smile. There was no mistaking the relief in the captain’s voice. “Why don’t some of you get cleaned up and rested?”
Sonya nodded wearily. “I volunteer for that duty.” She felt grubby and bone weary, but also a great deal of pride in a job well done against overwhelming odds. After a shower, she expected to feel even better.
Tony Shabalala entered the bridge, a small bandage on his head, but otherwise apparently fit for duty; he relieved Piotrowski, who followed Fabian and Rennan toward the lift. Sonya trailed, and was stopped briefly on the upper landing when Tev put a large hand on her shoulder. “Yes, Tev?”
The Tellarite paused, shuffled from one foot to the other, then snuffled a short laugh. “Good to have you back, Commander.”
Sonya smiled, felt it reaching up into her eyes. “Thank you.” She headed for the lift, still looking forward to that shower.
But she doubted it would make her feel any better than she did right now.
Chapter
13
Gold stood in the transporter room and felt like a cloth bag of loose bones that might break if he set any one angle down wrong. How long had he been up? His mind had passed beyond caring.
Before him, Captain S’linth and the frail station leader Es’a both stood on the low stage, ready to transport to the Dutiful Burden and the fate that now stood before them. They both looked at him expectantly.
“Captain S’linth,” he began, trying to ignore the film of too many hours awake on his teeth and the oily feel at the tip of his hair. “I must say, I can only imagine what it is you’ve done today, and yet it impressed the hell out of me. I also know a captain is only as good as his crew, and for them to follow you into what surely will be trouble speaks even more about you.”
The Resaurian closed his eye membranes and bowed slightly. “It is I who am honored. You showed me not all aliens are to be feared, or despised. You have shown the Federation holds its morals in deeds, not just actions. This has brought me hope for our future, as we continue to explore the regions near the nest.”
Gold couldn’t help the raised eyebrow. “You think you’ll be able to continue to explore space with all you’ve done? Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to run into you at any corner of the quadrant, but…just seems like you’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest and a whole heap of trouble to boot.”
“I don’t know exactly what a hornet’s nest is, but trouble, yes, I believe I have broken the egg and then some.”
“Captain,” Es’a interrupted. “There will be troubles, no doubt, but please do not worry. I and those with me shall see the Council is far too busy to deal with Captain S’linth.” Though the Resaurian was frail and unassuming, Gold immediately changed his mind about him. A lot of steel there, no doubt about it.
“Then good luck to you both, and I wish you well in the new world you’re about to create.”
After their departure, Gold found himself walking down the corridor of his ship, satisfaction radiating its usual warmth of a job well done. It was the kind of warmth that might carry over into solid, dreamless sleep. He stepped out of the turbolift to the bridge. Looking around, he saw that beta shift was on watch. Ironically, that meant that Piotrowski, having already done a chunk of alpha shift substituting for Shabalala, was now back on duty. The captain almost stepped back inside and then decided he might as well sign off on his log entries for the day. As he crossed to his ready room, he noticed Gomez and Konya, standing together at the rail, watching the Demon get smaller on the viewscreen.
It was the work of moments to pull up the log entries regarding this incredible day, and copy his signature over them. He passed back through the bridge on his way out. “When you’re comfortable, Rusconi.” The instruction to the conn officer was his only order. It was enough.
Sometime later—it actually unnerved him that he’d never recall how much time later—he sat on the side of his bed, having just finished prepping for sleep. The warm embrace of the bed called to him, and for once in a long while he knew there would be no dreams. The nightmare that had awakened him so many hours ago would not trouble him. Just as the ghosts of lost crew would no longer trouble him either. He’d finally come to terms with it and laid them to rest. Where they should be.
With a sigh of contentment, knowing his ship (and of course his granddaughter) were safe, Gold closed his eyes and fell asleep before he could even command the lights off.
Having watched the turbolift doors whisk shut behind Captain Gold, Rennan Konya relaxed, resting forward on the bridge’s upper landing rail next to Gomez. The commander had refreshed herself since their time on the Resaurian station. Her black hair was neatly back in place. She smelled of soap and had donned a clean uniform without grease smudges or dusty cuffs.
A small abrasion on her temple and a split fingernail seemed to be her only physical reminders of the entire adventure. Rennan had a good-size egg on his forehead from the steel pipe, and a nice bruise over his solar plexus to remind him that it just wasn’t a good idea to grab Sonya Gomez unannounced.
They’d all gotten off easy.
On the main viewscreen, the Demon looked over the bridge with its dark, baleful eye. “I’ve never been one to endow inanimate objects or stellar phenomenon with human traits,” he said. “No ‘happy suns’ or ‘hostile weather.’ But I would almost be willing to swear that it hates us.” Almost.
Gomez shrugged. But it was an uneasy shrug. “Back on Earth I once had a motorized scooter I named Lucifer. It was always breaking down and stranding me someplace. I’d take it apart and put it back together, trying to make it work. And it would, for a while.”
&n
bsp; “How old were you?”
“Twelve. I knew very early that I wanted to be an engineer.”
At the conn, Robin Rusconi plotted a course back to their original assignment, ready to go to warp once all gravitational effects from the black hole had diminished to safe levels. Piotrowski was back at tactical. She looked bored, and was resisting the urge to crane around to look at Gomez, ask her about the station, or just simply gossip. No Betazoid training necessary to detect that; Rennan had seen the two women get along well on and off the bridge. And beta shift was rarely an exciting time.
If Gomez had shown any desire for it, he would have turned back to his security station and left her to entertain the young ensigns. But the commander seemed perfectly content to relax with him. Wanted something from him, in fact, he sensed. A shield, perhaps, to prevent her from having to talk about the event so quickly.
Of course, it could also be a piece of wishful thinking. He could delve into her surface thoughts, see if it happened to cross her mind, but just now he preferred to have his nice, safe little mystery.
“I never did thank you for coming to look for me,” she said suddenly. “Did I?”
Rennan shook his head. “Now that you mention it, no. Though at the time you were most forceful with your…opinion.”
“Sorry about that.”
Silence reigned for a short time. The Demon’s eye shrank down until it could hardly be discerned from the dark voids that fell between stars. Rennan finally shrugged off her apology, then asked, “What about Lucifer? That motor scooter? Whatever happened to it?” It wasn’t that important. It just seemed a good piece of trivial conversation.
“I finally took it apart and never put it back together. So I guess I got the last word in, didn’t I?” She laughed, low and throaty. “But it kept its secret to the end. That was one of the other things I learned early on. Some things we just aren’t meant to discover.”
“That seems a fairly odd sentiment for an engineer.”
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