Star Trek: Vanguard: Storming Heaven

by David Mack

  “I suppose.” M’Benga tucked his hands into the pockets of his blue lab coat. “Though I have to wonder: After more than fifty years in Starfleet, do you think you’re still fit for civilian life? I can’t help but picture you getting home and going stir crazy in about a week.”

  That made Fisher chortle. “Oh, I don’t think so. Let me find a seat by a baseball diamond, or a soccer pitch, or a tennis court, and I’ll be right as rain. You’ll see.”

  M’Benga mirrored Fisher’s smile. “So. No regrets?”

  “Honestly? Only one.” Fisher closed the box. The lid locked with a soft magnetic click. “I’d always hoped you’d be the one to succeed me in this office.” He hefted the box with a grunt, set it atop two others that he’d already sealed for the quartermaster’s office to deliver to him later, then clapped his hands clean and stood beside M’Benga. “But I can see now that you’d never have been happy here. Not really. And I’m glad you found your calling on the Enterprise.”

  “So am I. But I’m glad I got the chance to work here with you first.”

  “Come with me,” Fisher said. “I want to tell you something.” Moving with the slow, steady gait of a man blessed with good health but burdened by old age, he led M’Benga out of the office and down a corridor through the administrative level of Vanguard Hospital. The younger man walked at his side, close enough for them to converse in the hushed tones considered appropriate in a medical setting. “Be glad for all the places you get to be, and everyone you meet along the way. It’s human nature to focus on beginnings or endings, and that’s why we often lose sight of where we are and what we’re doing, in the moment. But the present moment—the ever-present now—is all we ever really have. Our past is already lost, gone forever. Our future might never come. And as you get older and time feels like it’s speeding up, you even start to feel the now slipping away. And that’s when you realize just how quickly things can end—when you’re busy thinking about what was or what’ll never be.”

  M’Benga aimed an amused but admiring sidelong look at Fisher. “All right, Doctor. Let’s put your philosophy to work. What’s your prescription for this moment of now?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” Fisher draped his arm across M’Benga’s shoulders. “How would you like to watch a few dozen Tellarites try to reinvent the sport of rugby out on Fontana Meadow?”

  “That depends. Will there be beer?”

  “Of course,” Fisher said, as if M’Benga were a Philistine just for asking. “Just because we’re hundreds of light-years from civilization, that doesn’t mean we live like savages.”

  The younger man laughed. “Okay, count me in.”

  They reached the turbolift, Fisher pushed the call button, and they waited for a lift to arrive. “Let me test your memory, Doctor. What’s the first and only rule of rugby?”

  M’Benga put on a thoughtful intensity, and Fisher imagined it was because the young physician was recalling one of the many afternoons they’d spent watching sports together on the meadow years earlier. Then M’Benga smiled and looked at him. “No autopsy, no foul.”

  “Good man,” Fisher said, patting him on the back. “First round’s on me.”

  PART 2

  A MUSE OF FIRE

  11

  A pale dot on the Sagittarius’s main viewscreen, Eremar looked like nothing special to Captain Nassir’s naked eye. Bereft of planets, it was a dim and tiny ember, a lonely spark in the barren emptiness of the cosmos. The Sagittarius was half a billion kilometers from the pulsar, which, without the benefit of a false-spectrum sensor overlay, looked to Nassir like any other star. He knew better, of course. Incredibly dense, it was a neutron star rotating at a phenomenal rate, and its intense electromagnetic field emitted invisible bursts of extremely powerful and potentially dangerous radiation from its magnetic poles at regular intervals of 1.438 seconds.

  Commander Terrell stood beside Nassir’s chair, arms folded, looming over the captain, who hunched forward and did his best imitation of Rodin’s iconic sculpture, The Thinker. Around them the bridge officers worked quietly, each one keeping a close watch for any sign of danger. At the helm, zh’Firro guided the Sagittarius into a standard orbital approach and recon pattern. Sorak monitored the communications panel, Dastin fidgeted nervously as he leaned against the weapons console, and Theriault had her face pressed to the hood over the primary sensor display. The ship hummed along, the deck under Nassir’s feet alive with a steady vibration from the impulse engines pushed to full output.

  Nassir had no idea what he and his crew were supposed to be looking for. The pulsar had no planets. Were they seeking a derelict spacecraft? An abandoned space station? What if the Orions had simply used this isolated, hazardous place as a rendezvous point? He pushed that last pessimistic speculation from his mind. The Omari-Ekon’s navigational logs had not indicated any contact with other vessels in proximity to Eremar. They had, however, indicated a number of peculiar maneuvers, and unless a more promising lead presented itself soon, Nassir’s orders were to copy the Orions’ flight path and see where it led.

  Theriault dispelled the leaden hush with a brief exclamation of surprise and elation, transforming herself into the focus of attention on the bridge. She looked up from the sensor hood, her youthful face bright with excitement. “I found something! Something really weird!” Before either Nassir or Terrell had the chance to ask her to elaborate, she punched commands into her console and routed her findings to the main screen. A computer model of Eremar was superimposed over the image of the star, and several seemingly random points in close orbit of the pulsar were highlighted. “There’s a network of artificial objects around the pulsar, including one directly in the path of its emission axis.”

  Everyone fixed intense stares on the viewscreen, and Nassir rose from his chair. “What in the name of Kasor is that?”

  Trembling with barely contained glee, Theriault said, “I have a hypothesis.”

  Terrell shot a curious stare her way. “Let’s hear it.”

  “I think these objects used to be part of a Dyson bubble,” Theriault said. “They’re all composed of ultralight carbon compounds the sensors don’t recognize.” More commands tapped into the science console conjured a web of arcing lines connecting the far-flung dots to the one at the top. “Based on their positions, I think there used to be a lot more of them, hundreds of thousands, all around this pulsar. Now there are maybe a few hundred left.”

  Sorak arched one gray brow. “Most remarkable.”

  Getting up from the tactical panel, Dastin asked, “What do those lines represent?”

  “Subspace distortions,” Theriault replied. “Tiny tunnels through space-time.”

  Nassir began to imagine what this construct must have looked like when it was whole. “Could those subspace tunnels have been transmission conduits for energy and data?”

  The perky science officer nodded. “Absolutely.”

  Zh’Firro leaned forward until she’d practically draped herself over the helm. “Are they orbiting the pulsar?”

  “No,” Theriault said. “They’re statites, not satellites.” She thumbed a switch on her panel and enlarged the sensor image of one of the nearest objects. It resembled a massive disk surrounded by enormous, diaphanous fins. “They maintain their positions by using light sails and radiation pressure to counteract the pulsar’s gravity.”

  Terrell’s brow wrinkled with confusion. “But what about the one that lies on the pulsar’s emission axis? How does it hold its position when it gets zapped?”

  Theriault shrugged. “No idea.”

  “I think we’re about to find out,” zh’Firro said. She looked back at Nassir. “If we follow the Omari-Ekon’s flight plan, we’ll have to make a roughly half-second warp jump into that statite’s shadow. It’s the only way to get there without being fried by a blast from the pulsar.”

  Shrinking back into his seat, Dastin muttered, “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Neither do I
,” Nassir said, “but she’s right. If that’s the end point of the Orions’ trip to Eremar, there’s a good chance that’s where they found the artifact.”

  That news didn’t seem to sit well with Terrell. “Is it safe for us to go there?”

  Theriault’s sunny disposition gave way to trepidation. “Mostly.”

  Sorak stepped forward, toward Nassir and Terrell. “To elaborate on Lieutenant Theriault’s response, the statite would shield us from the majority of the pulsar’s immediately damaging emissions—but not all of them. Even in its shadow, we’d still be subjected to dangerous levels of cosmic radiation and electromagnetic effects. Inside the ship, with shields raised, we would have little to worry about. But anyone venturing outside would need to limit their exposure to no more than four hours at a time. They would also require antiradiation therapy upon their return to the ship.”

  Dastin shot a dubious look at the Vulcan. “Isn’t that a decision for the doctor?”

  “I am a medical doctor,” Sorak said.

  Terrell quipped to the new tactical officer, “He also holds doctorates in archaeology and xenobotany. So, if you get the urge to debate him about fossils or flowers . . . don’t.” The gentle rebuke was enough to persuade Dastin to turn his attention back to his own console. Turning back, Terrell asked Sorak, “How long will it take to prep a landing party?”

  “Twenty minutes,” Sorak said. “However, there is one further complication.”

  Anticipating the Vulcan’s news, Nassir said, “No transporters.”

  “Correct, sir.” To the others he explained, “Despite the protection offered by the statite, inside the pulsar’s emission axis the transporter will be inoperable. We’ll need to land the ship and deploy either on foot or in the rovers, depending upon the local gravity and terrain.”

  Nassir returned to his chair and sat down, feeling as if a black hole had taken hold of his spirit. He recalled the hyperbolic slogan of a Starfleet recruitment poster he’d seen as a youth on Delta IV: “It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure.”

  Isn’t that the truth.

  “Sayna, plot a warp jump to the statite. Clark, take Sorak, Theriault, and Ilucci, and suit up down in the cargo hold. We’ll let you know when it’s safe to go ashore.” He thumbed open an intraship channel from his chair’s armrest. “Ensign Taryl, report to the bridge. Doctor Babitz, report to the cargo deck, and bring antiradiation hyposprays for the landing party.”

  As Sorak, Theriault, and Terrell left the bridge, Nassir watched the pulsar loom large on the main viewscreen. He couldn’t see the relativistic jets of supercharged particles bursting out of it at regular intervals of less than two seconds, but he knew they were there—just as surely as he knew that even the most infinitesimal miscalculation by zh’Firro would see the Sagittarius reduced to ionized gas before any of them had time to realize they were dead.

  He clutched his armrest a little tighter and put on his mask of calm.

  It’s not just a job, he reminded himself, it’s an adventure.

  The Sagittarius touched down with a rough bump, and Ilucci felt the impact rattle his bones.

  Commander Terrell sealed the hatch to the main deck and the centenarian Lieutenant Sorak primed the depressurization sequence for the hold, both acting in preparation for the unsealing of the aft exterior hatch. Ilucci had never enjoyed stuffing his portly form inside an environmental suit, one of the least forgiving of all garments. As the landing party’s departure became imminent, the chief engineer tugged at his suit’s inseam, desperate to relieve its overly snug fit and give himself enough slack to walk with a normal stride. He wondered why the pressure gear always seemed cut for people with stick-figure bodies.

  Overcome with what he believed was a reasonable degree of paranoia, he rechecked the settings on his suit: Oxygen level: check. Reserve power: check. Radiation barrier at full: check.

  Everything was the same as it had been sixty seconds earlier.

  He had almost succeeded in calming his frazzled nerves when the aft ramp began to fold down, away from the underside of the ship’s saucer, toward the ground below. As the sliver-thin crack between ramp and bulkhead widened, Ilucci took in the barren sprawl that awaited the landing party: a tenebrous, trackless waste on the dark side of a radiation-bathed disk blasted sterile by millions of years of bombardment by a pulsar.

  Terrell led the landing party down the ramp and out into the forbidding darkness. Despite the small size and supposed low density of the statite, its gravity felt close to Terran normal.

  Theriault jumped up and landed almost immediately, displacing the regolith beneath her booted feet. Over the shared helmet comm channel, Ilucci heard her say, “Artificial gravity?”

  “That’d be my guess,” he said. “If it’s consistent, we might be able to use the rovers.”

  Sorak stepped away from the team and moved a few strides beyond the sheltering overhang of the Sagittarius’ saucer. Ilucci, Theriault, and Terrell followed him. Standing in the open, Ilucci turned in a slow circle, observing his surroundings.

  The graceful off-white form of the Sagittarius was veiled in shadow because its running lights were off. Over a hundred kilometers away in every direction, but still clearly visible thanks to the absence of an atmosphere to obscure the view with haze, the horizon curved upward by the slightest degree, making Ilucci hyperaware that they were on the shallowly concave side of the circular statite. Beneath that close horizon, he knew, light sails fanned around the statite’s edge, transforming the pulsar’s regular bursts of lethal energy into power and lift. Overhead, the stars burned with cold, steady fires, offering minimal illumination and no warmth.

  He noticed that the others all were facing in the same direction. Turning himself toward the same bearing, he saw why.

  An enormous structure stood several kilometers away, at the apparent center of the statite. It looked like a ruptured blister, a gigantic splashing droplet of molten black glass frozen in time. Its shapes and protrusions made it seem simultaneously biological and mechanical. The simple act of looking upon it, even from this distance, filled Ilucci with a cold dread. Everything about the construct made him want to retreat inside the ship; the last thing he wanted to do was move closer to it. Which made it very easy for him to predict what Terrell’s next order would be.

  “Master Chief, let’s power up the rovers and head over to that structure, on the double.”

  “Aye, sir,” Ilucci said, jogging back up the ramp and inside the ship’s cargo hold, in a hurry not to comply but to turn his back on the biomechanoid horror dominating the bleak nightscape. He took his time powering up one of the two terrestrial rovers, a pair of off-white, six-wheeled all-terrain vehicles optimized for moving personnel but powerful enough to haul cargo. Stenciled on the back panel of each rover was its nickname. “Roxy” was the faster of the two, but “Ziggy” had proved on many occasions to be more maneuverable, particularly at speed or in tight quarters. Roxy started up with no difficulty, and Ilucci hopped behind the controls and guided it in reverse down the ramp. A quick jerk of the wheel and a tap on the brakes, and he spun it to a halt beside the landing party, facing the alien structure. He hooked his gloved thumb over his shoulder at the empty seats. “Meter’s runnin’. Hop in.”

  Terrell took the front passenger seat. Sorak sat behind Ilucci, and Theriault climbed into the seat behind Terrell’s. All four of them took a moment to secure their safety straps, and Ilucci gave the rover’s protective roll cage a firm tug to make certain it was secure. “And away we go.” Against his better judgment and natural instincts, he stepped on the accelerator and sped the landing party toward the obsidian nightmare ahead.

  The drive across the statite’s surface was eerily silent. No one spoke; they all simply stared at their destination. The rover’s electric motor was quiet even in terrestrial settings, but in an airless environment such as this, it made no sound at all. No motor hum, and almost no appreciable vibration of acceleration. All that Ilucci hear
d during the drive to the structure was his own shallow breathing, hot and close inside his helmet. He watched the Sagittarius grow steadily more distant in the rover’s side-view mirror.

  As they neared to within a hundred meters of the structure, its details became clear and all the more terrifying. It was almost obscenely black. A wall ten meters high ringed its base, and from it a dozen looming towers rose at thirty-degree intervals and curled inward toward its center, like the retracting legs of a burning insect. Every square centimeter of its exterior that Ilucci could see was either mirror-perfect, fissured with cracks, or ringed with tubes that made him think of veins. Small tendrils of violet energy crept up the ebon talon-towers, and when the creepers met at the apex, they coalesced into bolts of blue lightning that stabbed down into the heart of the machine. The design was strongly reminiscent of the Shedai-built Conduits that Operation Vanguard had uncovered throughout the Taurus Reach, but this was clearly the product of a different culture wielding a less organic technology than the Shedai’s.

  Terrell nudged Ilucci and pointed to the right. His voice crackled softly over the helmet comm. “Circle its perimeter, Chief. Let’s find an entrance.”

  “Copy that, sir.” Ilucci steered right, off their collision course, and followed the curve of the structure. Within a minute it became obvious that the stadium-sized facility was round and highly symmetrical in its design.

  They were two-thirds of the way around the wall when Sorak pointed at a subtle variation in the shadows-on-darkness surface of the wall. “There. That looks like an opening.”

  “All right,” Terrell said. “Chief, take us in. Sorak, set your phaser for heavy stun and stand by to scout the entrance.”

  Ilucci drove the rover toward the wall and slowed to a gradual halt less than ten meters from the opening. Sorak freed himself from his safety harness, leapt from the rover, and dashed forward until he was beside the entrance. He peeked around the corner, then stole into the shadows with his phaser level and aimed straight ahead. Darkness swallowed him in seconds.