by David Mack
The da Vinci fired a burst of its beam weapons, hitting nothing, then leaped into subspace at its best possible speed. A final, futile gesture, Maleiras thought. A comm from Narjam on the Justice Maker commanded all vessels to pursue and overtake, at maximum velocity. “Engage stardrive,” Maleiras said.
The petite, violet-haired pilot keyed in the command.
Space-time itself disintegrated around the Starlit Wing.
Coleef clung to her helm console. “Subspatial disruption!”
The sensor station strobed, sparked, then went dark. Sesslom tumbled gracefully from his seat and dove headfirst through the aft hatch to the engineering deck below, no doubt moving to the auxiliary sensor console.
All around the Starlit Wing, the rest of the Silgov fleet tumbled erratically, struggling to regain navigational control. Equilibrium stole away from Maleiras as the normal streak of stars in subspace melted into a muddy blur of light.
Realizing that it would take her less time to do what needed to be done than it would to verbalize the orders to Coleef, Maleiras sprang from her seat and reached past the pilot. The chief scout disengaged the stardrive and initiated an energy pulse that was the inverse of the one that had snared them moments earlier.
With a gut-wrenching sensation of arrested motion, the Starlit Wing dropped out of subspace. The blur outside the cockpit window vanished and was replaced by a placid vista of stars. Coleef stared ahead, petrified and likely not yet aware that the crisis had passed.
Poking his head up through the aft hatch, an unusually frazzled-looking Sesslom said, “All systems nominal, my lady.”
Maleiras moved back to her seat. “Do we have a reading on the rest of the fleet?”
“Negative,” Sesslom said. “I believe they are still caught in the disruption. We lost contact with them when we returned to normal space-time.”
“Helm, position report.”
Coleef blinked a few times, regained her presence of mind, and checked her console. “Coordinates one-
eleven-point-seventeen, two twenty-three-point-six,
eighty-four-point-zero-one-five.” Then she blinked again, in disbelief. “Nine-point-six light-nokoshavs from the da Vinci, my lady.”
Checking the readings herself, Maleiras was stunned to see that they were correct. Most ingenious, she mused. Though she had no idea how the da Vinci could have hurled her vessel—not to mention the rest of the Silgov fleet—so far from the battle, she had no doubt that the Federation vessel was responsible for their displacement. Both impressed and amused, she couldn’t help but smile. Narjam is wrong to disregard the Federation, she decided. They are more powerful and more clever than he realized. Only a fool would make foes of such people.
Interrupting the chief scout’s musings, Coleef asked, “Course, my lady?” Maleiras looked at the pilot, but did not respond immediately. Coleef added, “Shall I plot a course to regroup with the fleet on its last known heading?”
Maleiras considered that suggestion. She imagined that Viceroy Narjam would be livid. Judging from the distance her own vessel had been thrown, she suspected that the rest of the fleet would likely find itself dozens of light-nokoshavs away before it escaped the disruption. There was no longer any chance that it would intercept the Koas pyramid before its deployment inside Federation space.
The Starlit Wing, however, was still close enough to try.
“Resume pursuit course,” Maleiras said. “Maximum speed.”
Chapter
6
Corsi watched with a knot in her stomach as Vinx and Lauoc forced open the door to the phaser control bay. The portal slid open slowly, one grinding centimeter at a time. A stench of scorched polymers and pungent smoke reached her nose. She dreaded to look. Ken Caitano had been with her security detail less than a week, having just replaced Frank Powers during the da Vinci’s recent visit to Earth. Now she would have to face Agosto Caitano, her most respected mentor at Starfleet Academy, and break the news to him that his daring, bright-eyed son had perished under her supervision.
Vinx scanned the charred compartment with his tricorder. “Nothin’ in there but ashes,” he said with his trademark nasal accent. Looking back at the unapologetically distraught Corsi, he added softly, “Sorry, doll.” Though she had told the Iotian security guard a dozen times to address her as “sir” or “Commander,” she was in no mood to mete out a reprimand just now. She stepped into the middle of the blackened room and idly kicked aside a chunk of burned debris.
Never any guarantees in this job, she brooded. She had felt an almost sisterly sense of duty to Caitano when he came aboard, but she had shown him no favoritism. Now she wished she had.
From beneath her feet came an insistent tapping.
“Vinx! Lauoc! Get in here and lift this plate!”
The two guards scrambled into the room and searched for purchase with their fingertips around the sides of the deck panel. It came free with a dry scrape. Chilly gray mist mushroomed out of the space below. Coughing at the bitter, bile-inducing fumes, Corsi took a step back. The plume evaporated to reveal Ken Caitano, smiling from inside his soot-stained damage-control gear. Still clutching a plasma cutter in his hand, he was snuggled against a neatly perforated phaser-coolant intake pipe that had flooded his cramped nook under the floor with frigid coolant fluid.
Chuckling, Corsi flashed the pretzel-posed security guard a relieved grin. “Lying down on the job, Caitano?”
Keying his suit’s external comm—which buzzed and crackled badly from the extremes of thermal abuse it had just suffered—he said, “Nice to see you, too, Commander.”
No doubt about it, she thought, He’s Agosto’s boy, all right.
Bart Faulwell drifted in space, his breath close and warm inside his EVA suit, the Koas pyramid clutched in his hands. Several minutes had passed since Poynter had beamed him off the da Vinci. He enjoyed the quiet, but the weightlessness was making him queasy, and he felt impotently small floating alone amid the infinite reach of the universe.
The ship had made excellent time to Mu Arae, leaving him barely enough time to decipher the remaining marks on the artifact. As he had suspected, they were instructions, but they had proved so vague as to be all but useless. About the only thing he knew for certain that it said was that it should be deployed in space, within ten light-minutes of the star. Beyond that there was nothing—no formulae to calculate, no cryptic patterns to parse. Just a blessing from the Preservers, and a notation that the pyramid itself would be consumed in the process of releasing Koa.
That last fact provoked a deep pang of regret in Faulwell. He had hoped to study the device afterward, perhaps team up with Abramowitz and write a paper on it for the Daystrom Institute…but once the S.C.E.’s good deed for today was complete, this priceless piece of the elusive and enigmatic Preserver culture would be lost forever.
Of course, so might I be, he knew. One detail he’d been unable to glean from repeated readings of the pyramid’s symbols was what would happen to the device’s courier as the planet expanded.
“Gold to Faulwell,” the captain said over the comm. “The da Vinci has reached station. Proceed when ready.”
“Aye, Captain.” Captain Gold had been concerned that the Silgov might catch up to the ship sooner rather than later, but Araneus was still in no condition to make the spacewalk. Consequently, the decision was made to initiate the release as soon as possible. There had been no shortage of volunteers for the mission—Pattie, Tev, Gomez, Corsi, and most of the ship’s security detail had offered to make the spacewalk and enter the commands as given by Faulwell.
Then he had pointed out to the captain that the symbols on the pyramid couldn’t be easily described; they had no analogs in any of the crew’s native tongues. Admirable though the team’s offers were, Faulwell made it clear that he was the only one qualified to enter the code. Of course, he could have recorded a visual guide for someone else, or even observed through a secure visual uplink. For whatever reason, however, no one had chosen to point o
ut those alternatives at the time. Standing in the shuttlebay minutes later, Gold had shaken Faulwell’s heavily gloved hand, patted his shoulder, and bid him a simple farewell with the words “Good luck.”
Now the heavens yawned around him, endless and cold.
Turning the device slowly in his hands, Faulwell looked for the first symbols of the release sequence. The Preservers had designed their artifact to be triggered by a Koas, whose multilimbed physiology would have made it easy to hold the object while pressing symbols on opposite sides simultaneously. Because he needed both his hands to enter the code sequence, Faulwell held the pyramid steady by tucking it between his knees and doubling over it, into an almost fetal curl.
His fingers hovered unsteadily over the first two symbols. Swallowing nervously, he found his mouth was dry and sour with fear. Straining to sharpen his focus, his eyes felt incapable of blinking and were opened as wide as they could go.
“Faulwell to da Vinci. I’m about to begin the sequence.”
Committing his hands to the task, he touched the first two symbols and pressed gently down. The two raised markings receded into the metal surface of the pyramid and vanished. Pair upon pair of symbols were reclaimed by the lustrous artifact, until only a final pair of activation markings remained. Faulwell hesitated for only the briefest moment, then finished the sequence. Stillness enveloped him.
Then he began moving.
Stars streaked past, becoming circles. Light and darkness pinwheeled around him, and he was held motionless. Zero gravity gave way to a crushing press of acceleration.
Light flared through the edges of the pyramid. Faulwell let go of it, and it drifted away in what seemed like slow time.
The sides fell open.
Koa began to swell, towering above him, dwarfing him, humbling him as its majesty was resurrected all but beneath his feet. Still the stars spun, and Koa grew, all in eerie silence.
The planet’s gravity tugged at him as together they hurtled madly through the void. A whooping holler fountained up from inside his chest, not out of fear, but from sheer exhilaration. Watching the continents resume their shapes on the rapidly turning sphere below, seeing the clouds reborn from a slumbering memory, his prolonged shout of excited alarm matured into gales of joyous laughter.
It was the most amazing thing Sonya Gomez had ever seen.
One moment, the main viewer had shown only the speckling of stars. Then a planet had appeared, like a suddenly inflated balloon, and sped away.
“Report!” Gomez said. At ops, Saldok checked his readings, but Gomez could tell even from across the bridge that there was more data pouring in than he could possibly be expected to process at once. “Saldok,” she added, “track the planet’s movement. Joanne, keep a lock on Bart. Tev, monitor—”
Eyes fixed on the aft science station, Tev interrupted, “The gas giants are moving!”
Captain Gold turned toward the main viewer. “On-screen!”
Saldok switched the image on the forward screen while Tev narrated more of his sensor readings. “The erratic orbit of the outer gas giant is changing,” Tev said. “Orbital forces are being equalized into a stable ellipse.” He adjusted his settings. “The inner gas giant’s orbit is shifting outward, to a distance of approximately two AUs.” He peeled himself away from the sensor display. Gomez was vaguely amused by the stunned look on his face. “The artifact is completely reshaping this star system,” he said in a dazed monotone.
“Saldok,” Gold said, “what’s Koa doing?”
“Establishing a stable elliptical orbit at a distance of one-point-two AUs, Captain. Orbital velocity slowing…planetary rotation stabilizing.” The Benzite was trembling—with excitement, Gomez figured, judging from the pitch of his voice—as he tapped in more commands on the ops console. “The gas giants are stabilizing into their new orbits, as well, sir. Orbital profiles normalizing.”
For a moment, no one said anything. Around the bridge, faces stared in wonderment at a unique technological marvel. Orbs that normally appeared static in space were being visibly and effortlessly rearranged while the crew watched.
Gomez noticed the dark look that crossed Gold’s face. The captain turned slowly toward the tactical officer.
“Piotrowski,” he said. “Where’s Faulwell?”
High above Koa, Bart Faulwell glided, arms wide, tears of joy in his eyes. A world, a civilization, had teetered on the precipice of oblivion, and he had helped pull it back from the edge. He knew that the Preservers were the true authors of the miracle, but he couldn’t stop looking at his hands.
If I do nothing else with my life, he told himself, this I can be proud of. This is what being in Starfleet is all about.
Sweetest of all would be putting these moments into words, inscribing them on paper for Anthony’s eyes, sharing them with the one man who knew his soul, in all its imperfection.
Regardless, doubts lingered in his heart.
How can married life be more liberating than this?
Floating in solitude, Faulwell savored the privacy, the breathing room of his life aboard the da Vinci. It seemed almost like a paradox—the notion that committing oneself to a single other individual could somehow impart a sense of freedom. When Anthony had made his wink-nudge suggestion of matrimony last week, Faulwell had thought such a notion absurd. Now he wondered whether any of this would seem so grand, so noble, if he didn’t have Anthony to share it with.
Envisioning such an empty life filled him with despair.
Before melancholy could close its grip on his heart, he caught sight of a familiar shape: The da Vinci cruised gracefully into orbit above him.
Captain Gold’s voice was a welcome presence inside the suddenly lonely confines of his pressure suit. “Faulwell, this is da Vinci, are you all right?”
“Affirmative, da Vinci. I’m okay.” He cast one more look down at the planet, then returned his gaze to the ship overhead. “And I’m ready to come home.”
Captain Gold waited patiently for the bridge crew—minus Tev, of course—to cease patting Bart Faulwell’s shoulders and slapping his back, in gestures that he could tell were equal parts congratulation and relief at Faulwell’s safe return. When the cryptographer finally joined him in the center of the bridge, he said, “Sorry to keep you waiting, Captain.” Smiling at the beaming faces around him, he added, “I was delayed.”
“No need to apologize to me, Faulwell. I just hope Caliph Sicarios hasn’t taken umbrage at being left on hold.”
Faulwell stumbled over the honorific alone. “Caliph—?”
Gold knew that he shouldn’t enjoy watching the man squirm like this, but it was all in good fun. Turning to Piotrowski, he said, “Open the channel.”
The image of a sepia-hued Koas appeared on the main viewer. Though it was adorned by a few bejeweled ceremonial vestments, Gold saw that the caliph’s true badge of office was its throne. The round, concave perch sat atop an obsidian pillar many meters above a sprawling, web-patterned grid of walkways and gathering areas, within which bustled more than a thousand Koas VIPs.
“Caliph Sicarios, I am Captain David Gold of the Federation Starship da Vinci. It has been our pleasure to assist your people in reaching our space. On behalf of the United Federation of Planets, I welcome you in peace.”
“Please accept our deepest thanks, Captain,” Sicarios said. “I have already spoken with Science Minister Araneus, and he has told me of the great personal risk you took in coming to our aid. You have honored us with your bravery.”
Gesturing to Faulwell to step forward next to him, Gold said, “Caliph, please permit me to introduce to you Bart Faulwell.”
Faulwell made a small bow toward the screen. “Greetings, Caliph Sicarios.”
“You are the one who recovered the lost Preserver key.”
“Yes, Caliph.”
“Koa owes its life to you,” Sicarios said. “My people are forever in your debt.”
“Please, Caliph,” Faulwell said. “There is no debt.
It was my duty to serve you in your hour of need. Because that is what friends do for one another.”
A gentle murmur wound its way through the assembly of Koas dignitaries beneath Sicarios, who waggled its tentacles at them, apparently signaling for silence. “We are pleased to find that the tales we have heard of the Federation have not been exaggerated.”
That attracted Gold’s curiosity. “Tales, Caliph?”
“Yes, Captain,” Sicarios said. “Though your Federation has only begun to reach out into the galaxy, your reputation far precedes you. Travelers speak of an egalitarian meritocracy, a coalition of worlds and peoples who band together by choice rather than by coercion. Some call it a utopian fantasy. Some see it as a threat to old ways and old ideas. But to some, the idea of your Federation…is the beginning of hope.
“No doubt you will find foes aplenty as you push deeper into the galaxy,” Sicarios added, “but I suspect that you also will find more friends and allies than you expect.”
“I hope you’re right, Caliph,” Gold said.
“Bart Faulwell, please accept our invitation to visit Koa as an honored guest. It is our wish to present you with our world’s written petition for membership in your Federation, so that you may carry it in person to your government.”
Looking embarrassed, Faulwell said, “I would be honored, Caliph, but such a task should belong to my captain.”
Gold placed a hand on Faulwell’s shoulder. “Faulwell, I think we can dispense with protocol in this case.” Turning toward the screen, he added, “He’ll beam down to join you shortly, Caliph.”
“Thank you, Captain. Bart Faulwell, we look forward to meeting you.”
“Likewise, Caliph.”
The channel blinked off, returning the broad, gray-green curve of the planet to the main viewer.
Now it was Gold’s turn to slap Faulwell’s shoulder. “Well done, Faulwell.”
“Thank you, Captain. Permission to go ashore, sir?”
“Granted. Report to the transporter room. Piotrowski—inform Chief Poynter that Faulwell will be beaming down to the Koas capital.” Faulwell walked quickly to the turbolift as Piotrowski relayed the order. Gold settled back into his chair and admired Faulwell’s handiwork on the main viewer.