Destiny_ Gods Of Night Part 28

Vale peeked upward through the windshield. "How thick do you think the sh.e.l.l is?"

"Without sensors, I could offer only a vague estimate," Tuvok said. "I would speculate that, so far, we have made seven-point-three kilometers of vertical descent while navigating inside the sh.e.l.l."

The XO half smirked at his report. "That's a 'vague estimate,' Tuvok?"

"Indeed. I suspect it might be inaccurate by up to three-tenths of a kilometer. Its value as a computational variable for a.s.sessing the sh.e.l.l's ma.s.s and other properties is negligible."

"Noted," Vale said. She resumed her anxious visual survey of the environment outside the ship as Tuvok guided the Mance through another banking turn, into a much brighter area.

The c.o.c.kpit windshield dimmed automatically to reduce the glare, enabling Tuvok to see that the pa.s.sage came to an abrupt end roughly sixty meters ahead of the shuttlecraft, at the source of the light flooding into the tunnel. He slowed the shuttle's forward motion to less than two meters per second as it drew within twenty meters of the light. The windshield dimmed again, revealing a gap along the bottom of the pa.s.sage, an opening just more than wide enough to let the Mance through.

He guided the shuttlecraft to a stop with its nose less than a decimeter from the terminal wall of the pa.s.sage. Then he nudged its vertical thrusters into a descent profile and eased the Mance straight down, past what he guessed was more than twenty meters of the same black metal...and into open s.p.a.ce.

Tuvok had too much control over his emotions to be amazed by the spectacle that stretched out ahead of him, but as a disciple of reason and as an explorer, he was impressed.

Before them lay a lush, bluish-green world swaddled in clouds and bathed in ersatz sunlight projected from the interior surface of the sh.e.l.l. From their vantage point on the edge of the planet's uppermost atmosphere, the sh.e.l.l looked like nothing more than a starless night, as if this was the only world orbiting the only star in the universe.

Checking his systems panel, Tuvok reported, "Sensor functions restored, Commander. Scanning the planet's surface."

"Any sign of habitation?" asked Vale.

"Life signs are extensive," Tuvok said as he reviewed the data. "The planet appears to be rich with plant and animal life in all regions and climates." He adjusted the sensors. "Scanning for artificial power sources and signal emissions." It took only seconds for the Mance's sensors to lock on to something large. "Intense power readings, Commander. From inside a large ma.s.s of refined metals and synthetic compounds. Range, nine hundred eighty-one kilometers, bearing two two one."

"Take us in, Tuvok."

"Should I raise shields?"

Vale shook her head. "Negative. Not unless they give us a reason. Let's try to make this a friendly visit."

"As you wish." He adjusted the shuttlecraft's heading and keyed its thrusters, hurtling the small ship forward through the atmosphere. They punched through ma.s.sive cloud banks and made a slight detour around a black-bruised stormhead that was bursting with rain and flashing with electric-blue lightning. Far below, the surface blurred past, a verdant landscape marked by dramatic rock formations and pristine, azure lakes.

Then the Mance pa.s.sed over a range of jagged peaks capped with snow and cruised over a twilit arctic sea, toward a shimmer on the horizon. Tuvok reduced the shuttle's speed and alt.i.tude as a glittering metropolis took shape above a sea of pack ice. The city covered the entirety of a vast, bowl-like platform, which hovered hundreds of meters above the water. Most of its highest towers were cl.u.s.tered in its center, and the airs.p.a.ce above and between them teemed with thousands of small objects in motion.

"Wow," Vale said under her breath. "I'm guessing that's our energy source?"

"Affirmative," Tuvok said. He responded to a soft beeping on his console and saw that a signal was being transmitted to the shuttlecraft. "Commander, we appear to be receiving a repeating signal from the city. I believe it might be a beacon intended to guide us to a landing site."

Vale nodded once. "Follow it." She adjusted the sensor protocols. "The energy levels are making it hard to detect any life signs inside the city...except one. It's carbon-based, but it doesn't match anything in the computer."

"I've locked on to our landing coordinates," Tuvok said, guiding the Mance through a wide turn past twisting, organically shaped towers of dark crystal and delicate metalwork. He pointed at a circular platform situated at the end of a narrow causeway, a hundred meters past the edge of the city's outermost rampart.

The XO seemed amused. "All this high technology, but the visitor parking lot's still out in the boondocks. I guess some things really are universal." She looked at Tuvok as if she expected him to return her volley of inane banter with one of his own. Noting his pointed lack of a response, she faced forward and muttered, "Tough room."

Tuvok centered the shuttlecraft above the landing pad and eased it downward. It made only the slightest b.u.mp of contact as it touched down and settled on the platform. As he switched off the thrusters and activated routine command lockouts to secure the craft during the away team's absence, Vale moved through the aft cabin and marshaled the pa.s.sengers into motion.

"Everybody ready?" she asked. The others nodded. She opened the port hatch, letting in a blast of frigid air. "Let's go."

Troi and Torvig were the first to follow Vale out of the shuttlecraft, and then Keru, Dennisar, and Sortollo exited with their rifles slung diagonally across their backs. Tuvok paused at the threshold when he noticed Dr. Ree lingering in the middle of the pa.s.senger cabin. "Doctor? Are you all right?"

"Let's just say that extreme cold is not a friend of the Pahkwa-thanh," Ree replied.

"Your exposure will be brief," Tuvok said. "Scans of the city I made during our approach indicate that the average temperature inside its environmental maintenance field is thirty degrees Celsius. I suspect that our landing area has been placed outside the protected zone as an incentive for us to leave the ship and proceed inward."

Ree's tongue flicked twice from between his front fangs, and he rasped, "Doesn't mean I have to like it." Then he lumbered through the hatch and out of the ship. Tuvok followed him into the dry, arctic chill.

"What the h.e.l.l took you two?" snapped Vale in between huffing warm breath onto her cupped hands. "We're freezing our a.s.ses off out here." She tucked her hands under her armpits. "Come on. Double-time, people."

She led the away team at a brisk jog across the causeway, toward the humbling majesty of the city, whose structures gleamed with reflections of the peach-and-indigo arctic sky and the silhouetted landscape of peaks flanking a virgin sea. Their breath billowed around their heads in short-lived gray plumes as they ran, dispersed by gusts of wind that roared in their ears.

It was not a long run, but the extreme cold made it seem like one. Ahead of Tuvok, a wave of exhaustion and relief seemed to wash over the away team members. Then he caught up to them and felt the balmy warmth of the city's protected climate. It was more humid than he would have preferred, but still mild by human standards.

Dr. Ree arched his head back until his long snout was pointed straight up, and he made several deep snorting sounds, followed by rich, trumpeting blares that sounded as if they had originated deep inside his torso. He relaxed then and noticed the surprised looks from the other away team members. "Warming breaths," he said. "Just something Pahkwa-thanh have to do after we're exposed to the cold."

Vale gave a tight-lipped grin and said, "Okay, then. If show-and-tell's over, let's get..." Her voice tapered off as she stared past the away team, back toward the shuttlecraft. Tuvok and the others turned to follow her gaze.

The causeway had vanished. A hundred meters away, past a gulf of open air hundreds of meters above an ice-packed arctic sea, the circular landing platform hovered without support. The Mance did not appear to have been damaged; apparently, whoever had removed the causeway had been satisfied merely to render the vessel inaccessible.

"Well...that's just great," Keru said. He looked at Sortollo and Dennisar. "I don't suppose either of you can do a hundred-meter long jump?"

Holding up her palms, Vale said, "All right, we came here to work some diplomacy. Getting our ship back will just have to be one of our negotiating terms-right, Counselor?"

"I think you'll have to ask them," Troi said, pointing.

Tuvok pivoted back toward the city and looked up, along the line of Troi's outstretched arm. Hundreds of meters above them, from a breezeway connecting two ma.s.sive but delicate-looking towers, three figures floated downward with swift grace.

The away team watched in silence as the descending trio neared. Vale, Tuvok, and Troi stepped forward to meet them.

When the beings came within ten meters of the ground, they slowed and positioned themselves in a line. The two mottled gray-and-blue aliens at either end had their tendril-like fingers folded together in front of them. Their heads were bowed slightly forward, revealing the enormous globes of their skulls. Their generally humanoid shape made the ribbed tubing that ran from their chests to what Tuvok a.s.sumed were respiratory tubules near the backs of their heads all the more curious.

Most curious of all was the figure standing between them.

According to his tricorder, it was a carbon-based life-form of a kind not previously encountered by the Federation. What he saw was an athletic, healthy, and attractive young human woman with a long and unruly mane of black hair. Judging from her appearance, he estimated her age to be somewhere between her late teens and her early twenties.

The woman stepped forward and looked at Vale and Troi. Her voice sounded guarded and cautious-and perhaps secretly excited. "Humans," she said, apparently not discerning that Troi was half-Betazoid. Then she looked at Tuvok. "Vulcan." She glanced past them at the rest of the away team. "Orion," she said when she saw Dennisar. Looking at Keru, she said, "Trill."

After eyeing Torvig, she said nothing at all.

Tuvok studied the woman's face. Something about her seemed familiar to him. He searched his memory and found the reason.

Troi asked her, "You recognize our species?"

Before the woman could answer, Tuvok said, "I'm sure she does, Counselor. She is from Earth." Everyone looked at Tuvok for the explanation. He addressed the woman directly. "You are Captain Erika Hernandez of the Earth starship Columbia, missing in action for more than two hundred years."

"Yes," Hernandez replied. "I was the captain of the Columbia. And I've been missing much longer than you think." She raised her voice to address the rest of the away team. "Welcome to New Erigol."

APPENDIX I.

2156.

Featured Crew Members Columbia NX-02 Captain Erika Hernandez (human female) commanding officer Commander Veronica Fletcher (human female) executive officer Lieutenant Commander Kalil el-Rashad (human male) second officer/science officer Lieutenant Karl Graylock (human male) chief engineer Lieutenant Johanna Metzger (human female) chief medical officer Lieutenant Kiona Thayer (human female) senior weapons officer Ensign Sidra Valerian (human female) communications officer Major Stephen Foyle (human male) MACO commander Lieutenant Vincenzo Yacavino (human male) MACO second-in-command Sergeant Gage Pembleton (human male) MACO first sergeant APPENDIX II.

STARDATE 58100 (early February 2381) Featured Crew Members U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-E Captain Jean-Luc Picard (human male) commanding officer Commander Worf (Klingon male) executive officer Commander Miranda Kadohata (human female) second officer/operations officer Commander Geordi La Forge (human male) chief engineer Commander Beverly Crusher (human female) chief medical officer Lieutenant Hegol Den (Bajoran male) senior counselor Lieutenant Jasminder Choudhury (human female) chief of security Lieutenant Dina Elfiki (human female) senior science officer Lieutenant T'Ryssa Chen (Vulcan-human female) contact specialist/flight controller U.S.S. t.i.tan NCC-80102 Captain William T. Riker (human male) commanding officer Commander Christine Vale (human female) executive officer Commander Tuvok (Vulcan male) second officer/tactical officer Commander Deanna Troi (Betazoid-human female) diplomatic officer/senior counselor Commander Xin Ra-Havreii (Efrosian male) chief engineer Lieutenant Commander Shenti Yisec Eres Ree (Pahkwa-thanh male) chief medical officer Lieutenant Commander Ranul Keru (Trill male) chief of security Lieutenant Commander Melora Pazlar (Elaysian female) senior science officer Lieutenant Pral glasch Haaj (Tellarite male) counselor Lieutenant Huilan Sen'kara (Sti'ach male) counselor Ensign Torvig Bu-kar-nguv (Choblik male) engineer U.S.S. Aventine NCC-82602 Captain Ezri Dax (Trill female) commanding officer Commander Samaritan Bowers (human male) executive officer Lieutenant Commander Gruhn Helkara (Zakdorn male) second officer/senior science officer Lieutenant Lonnoc Kedair (Takaran female) chief of security Lieutenant Simon Ta.r.s.es (human-Romulan male) chief medical officer Lieutenant Mikaela Leishman (human female) chief engineer Lieutenant Oliana Mirren (human female) senior operations officer

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

A trilogy is a large and complex undertaking, one that I knew from the outset would be greater in its scope and more demanding in its execution than any of my previous projects. I am, therefore, grateful for the support and encouragement of my lovely and loving wife, Kara, who is doing her best during this marathon endeavor to remind me why I do it in the first place.

As for where all this started, I guess we can thank (or blame) artist Pierre Drolet, whose painting of the crashed Columbia NX-02 in the book Ships of the Line planted the seed of this idea in the minds of my editors, Marco Palmieri and Margaret Clark. I am also enormously grateful that, of all the authors who Marco and Margaret could have invited to write this trilogy, they chose me.

As usual, my fellow Star Trek authors have been a G.o.dsend. In particular, I owe thanks to J.M. Dillard, Peter David, Keith R.A. DeCandido, and Christopher L. Bennett, who all helped set the literary stage for this trilogy, and to Kirsten Beyer, who has the Sisyphean task of mopping up after it.

Lastly, I'd like to extend my heartfelt thanks to those few, special people in Lynchburg, Tennessee, who do what they do so well, so that I can do what I do at all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

David Mack has written some books. He hopes to write more books. As of this writing, he is currently on Day 5,919 (and counting) of his corporate captivity in New York.