Instead, the Enterprise was pulled closer.
“Where’s the damned turbolift you told me about?” shouted Worf, not particularly thrilled that the vibration of the ground beneath him was increasing.
Worf, Geordi, and Data were beneath the floor of the prison cell. Far above them, from the streets high overhead, the sounds of widespread panic could be heard. But there was no course except that which they were pursuing.
Data was standing in puzzlement in front of the lift doors, which refused to open. “I do not know,” he said.
“Stand aside,” said Worf, pulling out his phaser, ready to blast the doors apart. But Data was blocking the way and was now shoving his fingers into the narrow crack between the doors. Applying his strength, he shoved the doors apart . . .
And almost stepped into nothingness.
A deep shaft yawned before him. There was no turbolift car to be seen.
“We have a problem,” said Geordi.
“Getting down to the weapons area quickly seems to be our only hope for preventing disaster on this planet,” said Data. “And I can see only one way down.”
He looked at Geordi and the engineer realized what he was thinking. “Oh, no, Data, please,” he said. “Not that.”
“I saw several abandoned just outside the building.”
“Not that. Please.”
“Several what?” asked Worf.
Five minutes later Geordi was once again clutching a speeder sled for dear life.
Data was flying with machinelike precision, and Worf was right behind them on a second sled. The sides of the shaft rushed by them at dizzying speed.
They got to the drop-off curve and angled straight down. The g-force pushed Geordi back in his seat. If he could have forced himself to release his grip for a moment, he would have yanked off his VISOR.
He bit his lip and thought, This one’s for you, Nassa.
The high-speed descent continued, and then Geordi’s VISOR screamed a warning at him. “The bottom!” he shouted as loud as he could, praying that the rushing air wouldn’t rip his words away. “It’s just ahead of us!”
He needn’t have worried. Data’s hearing was sharp, and the words carried back to Worf. In perfect synchronization, both of them slowed the forward thrust of the speed sleds and leveled them off. They alighted gently on a gleaming metallic surface that Geordi immediately realized must be the top of the turbolift.
There was an emergency hatch directly beneath Data’s feet. Gripping it firmly, the android yanked it upward. It came free with a screech of metal, and one by one, they dropped through the hatch and into the turbolift car.
The doors were open; they ran into the weapons room. Then they stopped, not believing what they were seeing.
All the screens were lit up. On one was a visual of the Valley with the undulating energy cone. On another was a graphic of a rapidly forming wormhole. On a third was a visual of the Enterprise and a ship that seemed to be of K’Vin design, the two of them struggling desperately in the grip of the wormhole. On yet another screen was a diagram of a star system that Geordi did not immediately recognize. Everywhere lights were flashing as instructions were processed and moved forward with determined speed. The vibrations were less violent in this room, but the officers still felt them increasing as fast as the massive spatial sinkhole that was threatening to swallow the Enterprise.
And in the center of it all was Thul, bent over a console, shaking his head, apparently dazed. When he turned toward the Enterprise officers, his eyes seemed to have shrunk in their sockets.
“I wanted to destroy them,” he muttered, his voice flat and eerie in the huge chamber. “I wanted to obliterate them, but instead I’ve destroyed myself, my people, everything! Everything, gone!”
“Daaata,” said Geordi, extremely nervous. “What’s happening here?”
Data’s mind was racing frantically, taking it all in, looking once more at the glyphs, which had smatterings of other alien tongues mixed in. Looking at the visuals, the graphics, and information pouring from a dozen other screens tracking energy levels, celestial navigation, and gravity fields—
“Of course!” shouted Data. “It’s elementary.”
Worf came toward him, growling, and Geordi tried to hold him back. Data didn’t even notice.
“This,” he said with a sweep of his hand, “this whole planet—it has doomsday capability. Look,” and he pointed at the starchart. Computer-generated lines were lancing across it. “This is the K’Vin star system. This planet is the K’Vin homeworld. And it is being targeted.”
“Targeted for what?” said Geordi, and then he realized. “Oh, my God.”
“Exactly,” said Data. “This machinery is generating that wormhole.”
“We’ll be sucked in,” said Geordi.
“Yes,” said Data. “The other end of the wormhole is going to be generated there.” He pointed. “Right within range of the K’Vin homeworld. Rather startling technology, actually. When the wormhole is large enough, this entire planet will be sucked in and hurled through the funnel like a stone from a slingshot. Just as this happens, a hole will be created at the other end and Kirlos will hurtle out and crash into the K’Vin homeworld. The effect will be almost instantaneous.”
“We can’t stand around admiring it!” said Geordi. “We have to stop it!”
“Of course,” said Data. “And we’ll have to do it quickly.” Even as he continued to speak, his hands began to fly over the controls. “The Enterprise is clearly using its tractor beams to prevent the K’Vin ship from being sucked in, but they will not be able to save themselves much longer. If they are sucked in before the wormhole is ready, they will be crushed in the gravity well. And even if they manage to maintain their distance, they are still between Kirlos and the wormhole. So they will be shoved inward when we are drawn in, and crushed between us and the K’Vin homeworld. Neither possibility is promising.” He nodded toward another bank of instruments. “Geordi, go to those controls and do exactly as I say.”
Chapter Twenty
PARTICLES OF DUST that had drifted lazily through space for countless aeons now collided in their mad rush to fill the deep rent in the fabric of space. They were joined by asteroids and odd bits of debris, a thickening cloud of matter pulled from the Sydon solar system. And here and there along the perimeter of the vortex, the ships of many worlds—Xanthricite, Randrisian, Andor—were buffeted by the incoming stream. Mired in the sucking pool, they struggled to escape.
Some failed.
The Ariantu ships had also fallen victim to their ancestors’ machinery. Tail first, the entire paac was being dragged closer and closer to the widening maw of the wormhole. Baruk’s ship was the first of the fighters to be whisked away.
Arikka stared at the swirling vortex that filled the viewscreen of the heartship. Ariantu technology had built the mechanisms that created the wormhole; Ariantu equipment could sense its presence.
“The Howling God lives!”
“Of course, Mother,” said Teroon. “We’ve heard the legend of its creation all our lives.”
“Yes, but I thought it was a lie the High Paacs used to scare gullible farmers into submission.”
It had certainly scared her paac. The cabin crew was paralyzed, staring transfixed at the swirling patterns of energy. Only Teroon was calm, his fur unruffled. He began to recite in a soft voice: “The Old Ones could mold the universe to their will. They used the threat of that power to defend their empire. The price would be the destruction of Kirlos, but the planet was made for that very purpose.”
Words from the half-forgotten narrative resurfaced in Arikka’s mind. She continued the tale. “But the Ariantu artisans grew too fond of their crafted world, and when the K’Vin rose against them, they could not bring themselves to destroy the planet after all.”
The crew of the heartship tensed as a second ship of the fleet was pulled to the lip of the maelstrom. It struggled to escape, jerking and twisting as if in pain, then va
nished within the turbulent cloud.
“We are doomed,” whispered Arikka. She had the courage to fight the K’Vin, but there was no way to fight this curse of her ancestors.
“It is only a tunnel, Mother,” said Teroon. “A tunnel through space. And until Kirlos is sucked through, we can travel safely to the other side.”
She almost dismissed his words as madness until she remembered that he had distant kin connections to one of the lesser High Paacs. For the first time in her long life she glimpsed the nature of true nobility: Teroon had not only heard the old legends; he had understood them.
“Where does it lead, this tunnel?”
Her shipmaster bared his teeth. “To the K’Vin homeworld.”
“Ahh!”
She wondered if he was telling the truth. Or if, in fact, any living Ariantu knew the truth of the Howling God after five thousand years. Perhaps the answer was unimportant. Rather than wait for death, Arikka would leap forward to meet it with a drawn dagger.
“Heartmaster, prepare to jump.”
Geordi worked as quickly as he could, following Data’s instructions. The android was giving it everything he had as he decoded computer commands, tried to disarm systems and drop down energy levels.
Thul had had two pieces of remarkable and somewhat questionable luck. The first was that he had been able to activate the doomsday weapon in the first place. Geordi was chalking that off to the concept that the entire doomsday system was on a hair trigger anyway.
The second bit of Thul’s luck, Geordi remarked to himself, was that he was not already dead. Worf had even grumbled that if they were all going to die, Thul should go first—though that had no doubt been another example of Klingon humor.
Data stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Geordi shouted, for the sounds of impending destruction were becoming louder and louder.
“The computer is rejecting my shutdown code,” said Data. “I will have to find alternatives. Also, we cannot just recalibrate the guidance system, we have to eliminate it entirely. Otherwise we will simply be hurled somewhere else.”
“Data, how long is it going to take?” demanded Geordi.
Data started to work faster. On the screen the Enterprise was losing what might be her final battle. Both the starship and the K’Vin ship were being dragged closer and closer to the wormhole.
“How long?” Geordi said.
“I am not sure,” said Data.
Geordi felt as if the floor had been yanked out from under him. “Not sure! How long has the Enterprise got?”
Data glanced at the rate of progression of the wormhole. “Two minutes, thirty-four seconds.”
Geordi mouthed it, but couldn’t say it.
Data’s hands moved quickly as he desperately searched for a solution. He scanned the glyphs, ran a million combinations in a second.
“Will you make it?” pressed Worf.
“I do not know,” said Data again. “It will be three minutes, perhaps four until I can stop it.”
“That’s too long!” cried Geordi.
Data never slowed. “Perhaps it will take less time. I cannot be certain.”
“You have to be certain, or everyone on the ship is going to die—and maybe us too!”
“I am working on it.”
“Data!”
Time ticked past.
Geordi was at Data’s side, doing as he was instructed, obeying the android’s clipped directions, but things weren’t slowing down. Energy levels were building.
“It is still not accepting the matching codes,” said Data, his voice inhumanly calm. “I know it is an eighteen-glyph sequential based in—”
“Data!”
On the screen the Enterprise seemed to be distorting, the nacelles stretching, the saucer section distending. It was slipping backwards as gravity sucked it into the wormhole. Geordi could hear the screams of his friends in his head. “Data! Are we going to make it, yes or no?”
Data looked up, saw the starship’s peril, felt the planet rumbling, saw the energy buildup. He might make it, he realized. The whole system would shut down immediately if he could just find the right code. He might make it.
He might not.
The Enterprise started to spin toward the wormhole, the K’Vin ship right behind it. Only seconds remained.
And from behind Data a low voice rumbled, “Permission to do something, sir.”
He might make it still, Data thought. But he might not.
What could Worf do? Well, certainly the answer was obvious. And if Data was wrong, if Worf was wrong, they would all die. If Data waited and solved the riddle himself, they might still make it.
Or they might not.
Time.
No time. Out of time.
Now, Data’s mind demanded, decide now.
All of that took less than a second to process. Seemingly without an instant’s hesitation, he turned to Worf.
“Make it so,” he said.
Worf raised his phaser and fired.
The beam struck the instrument banks on the far left. Worf kept firing and swept his phaser along, the beam slicing through the equipment. Geordi and Data hit the floor, and Worf kept going. From everywhere sparks flew as circuitry bubbled and hissed, metal melted, and explosions erupted from deep within the machinery.
Worf completed the arc on one side, dropped to one knee, spun, and started on the other side. The screens blew out, as did the gleaming black control panels. The glyphs disappeared in the eruptions, never to be translated. The computer banks cracked apart, and from all around them came one detonation after another, like a string of firecrackers, only far more ear-shattering.
Thul was screaming, but his screams were drowned out by explosions and phaser fire. Then Worf dropped to the floor, too, as panels leaped across the room, propelled by concussive force. Flames licked out of the cracks, and acrid stinging smoke filled the air. All around them was chaos and calamity; the end of the world was at hand, there to be touched and feared.
The eruption of the computers continued for what seemed forever but in actuality was only seconds, seconds filled with fear and hope and prayer and a certainty that these were their last moments and damn, what a stupid way to die—as part of a doomsday weapon from a long-ago conflict.
And then, one by one, the explosions died down, and soon there was nothing but the heavy-hanging smoke.
The ground had stopped rumbling.
Slowly, amid much coughing, Geordi sat up, as did Data. Thul was still trembling, but they ignored him. Their faces were streaked with grime and ashes.
“Worf?” whispered Geordi. “You there?”
There was a loud cough and then “Yes.”
They all sat there in silence as the smoke slowly dissipated. Worf was seated nearby, his face also covered with ashes.
He was glaring balefully at Data.
“Good work, Lieutenant,” said Data hopefully.
Worf made no reply. Instead, he got to his feet and started to dust himself off.
“Data,” said Geordi, “now that you’ve had your first real command . . . did you learn anything from it?”
Data considered the question. “I believe I have learned that command is far more difficult than I thought it to be. And you, Geordi?”
Geordi shrugged. “I learned that I need to try to keep cooler in high-pressure situations . . . and maybe find a way to keep my VISOR on tighter.”
“I have learned something,” said Worf.
The two of them looked at him in surprise.
“I have learned,” said the Klingon, “that if I had been allowed to shoot things when I wanted to shoot them in the first place, we would have had significantly fewer problems.” And with that, he turned on his heel and headed for the turbolift.
Chapter Twenty-one
THE HEARTSHIP’S PLUNGE into the mouth of the Howling God had electrified the remaining Ariantu. Pulses racing, tails curling, they cried out in unison as they watched the ship disappear f
rom view. Their paac mother’s action was worthy of a heroic saga, one that would be recounted for generations to come.
Yet there would have to be survivors if the tale was to be told. Perhaps that concern explained the hesitation of her children in following Arikka’s lead. Despite an upswelling of pride at her courage, the shipmasters still strained their engines to stay out of the vortex.
Then the wormhole collapsed.
Light and energy spewed outward, squeezed from the depths of the hole. Objects caught in the swirling currents of gravity waves were pulverized by opposing forces. Just as abruptly as it had formed, the cosmic disruption subsided. In the calm that followed, a different motion began.
Of the twelve ships that had left Ariant months before, only seven remained. Despite their dwindling numbers, those seven were still hunters. The paac members did not waste any time in mewling their relief at the Howling God’s departure; they immediately cast about for worthy prey.
The fighters did not need to travel far. The ancient weapon of their ancestors had saved them the trouble by snaring a Federation starship. Anxious to erase any impression of cowardice that might linger in the minds of their close-lying enemy, the fleet closed in on the starship called Enterprise.
Life support had been the last system to lose power to the demands of engineering. Warmth lingered, trapped by the insulating layers of the hull, but the air grew thick very quickly. The lack of oxygen had already begun to dull his mind when Picard heard the whine of the engines fade into silence. He felt himself pushed back into his chair by the forward acceleration.
At last. It’s come. And he braced himself for the crushing well of gravity that waited for the Enterprise in the depths of the wormhole.
The glide continued.
Picard’s labored breathing grew easier; his head cleared. All around him, lights were flashing with greater speed and intensity. The soft chatter of computers grew louder.
“Status report,” he demanded with a hoarse cough. Amid the welter of voices the captain picked out one reply in particular.
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