Star Trek: Vanguard: Storming Heaven (2 page)

Tim Pennington’s answer was low and fraught with grim remembrance. “I was there till the end, mate. The bitter, bloody end.”

The two men sat in reclining chairs that faced the gradually rekindling embers in Reyes’s stone fireplace. A silence yawned between them, broken only by random pops from fresh logs splintering atop the banked fire and tossing short-lived sparks across the broad hearth. Reyes tilted his head back, splaying his shoulder-length black-and-gray hair across his headrest, and enjoyed the quietude. They had been conversing for hours, ever since the journalist’s unannounced arrival on the shore of Reyes’s private island, just before sundown. The former Starfleet commodore had done most of the talking, of course, filling in gaps and illuminating secrets of what had gone on behind closed doors during his final days at Starbase 47, which had become better known, within Starfleet and to the public, as Vanguard. Now it was late, and the air in the room felt heavy from the surfeit of conversation.

Pennington tucked in his chair’s footrest and pulled himself to his feet. The lean, fair-haired Scotsman straightened and stretched his arms toward the high, open-frame ceiling, whose rough-hewn beams gave off a fragrance reminiscent of fresh cedar. As the writer lowered his arms, he paused to massage his right shoulder, where his cybernetic prosthetic met his torso. He had been plagued with a persistent ache, he’d confided, ever since
losing his arm in a furious Starfleet-Orion crossfire on Starbase 47 a couple of years earlier.

Reyes watched him pick up his glass and carry it to a frost-bordered window that overlooked the lake. Dappled by wind and moonlight, the black water seemed to stretch away forever into the night. There were no lights along the lake’s shore—at least, none visible from Reyes’s home—so at night the heavily wooded mainland became a distant memory, swallowed by darkness until the stars wheeled away to their daytime hiding places.

The younger man nursed his drink and stared out the window. “I’m not sure how much I’m really allowed to say about what I saw.”

Another sip from his own glass rewarded Reyes with a mouthful of smoky warmth and a complex sweetness that mingled notes of caramel, cherry, and oak. He savored the pleasant burn of the small-batch whiskey as he swallowed, then he fixed his gaze on a pair of dueling flames inside the fireplace. “If it helps, you were never here, and we never spoke.”

“I’d figured as much.” He spent a moment looking into his glass. In the ruddy firelight and dancing shadows, he looked much older to Reyes than he had just two years earlier. Reyes imagined that whatever events Pennington had lived through since then were to blame for the crow’s-feet that framed his blue eyes and the worry lines that creased his high forehead.

Poor bastard,
Reyes reflected with dark humor.
He’s starting to look like me
.

Pennington turned away from the window and drifted back to the empty recliner. He stood beside it and watched sparks float from the fire and disappear up the chimney. “What was the last thing you heard from Vanguard before the news blackout?”

“I seem to recall something about a civilian shipping accident.”

That drew a crooked, wry grimace from Pennington. “Ah, yes. The warp-core breach on the
Omari-Ekon
.” He shook his head, then looked askance at Reyes. “I’d always wondered why it was allowed to leave the station, after what happened.”

Reyes avoided his guest’s accusatory stare. “I didn’t.” He recalled his escape from the Orion merchantman—the same incident that had cost Pennington his arm. With a little help from Starfleet Intelligence officer Lieutenant T’Prynn, Reyes had hacked the Orion ship’s navigational records and stolen the coordinates for the source of an artifact that Starfleet had learned could be used as a weapon against the Shedai, an ancient race that possessed fearsome power and mysterious abilities. Although his and T’Prynn’s exit from the ship had resulted in a bloodbath, the Federation had defused the ensuing political fallout by exonerating the ship’s owner, Neera, of culpability for the firefight and sending her and her crew on their way.

What none of the admirals at Starfleet Command had said aloud was that there was no way they were going to permit the
Omari-Ekon
to leave Vanguard’s jurisdiction with that kind of intel aboard as a lure for the Klingons, the Romulans, the Tholians, and whoever else might be vying for control over the Taurus Reach and its terrible secrets. Consequently, shortly after moving beyond the station’s patrol zone, the
Omari-Ekon
had suffered a sudden, disastrous mechanical failure, and, just as Reyes had suspected, the first ship to reach its smoldering wreckage had reported there were no survivors.

He scratched an itch on his chin through his neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard and cast a wary look at Pennington. “So, what now?”

“Fair’s fair, right? You told me your secrets, so now I tell you mine?”

“Only if you’re planning on drinking any more of my whiskey.”

Pennington looked at his glass for a moment, or perhaps he was staring through it while his thoughts roamed light-years away; Reyes couldn’t tell for certain. The man pursed his lips. “There are some things I know only secondhand. Some of it’s from witnesses, some’s nothing more than hearsay. I’ve got signal intercepts and transcripts, sensor logs and declassified reports. But a few of the holes I had to fill in with educated guesswork.
I’m pretty sure what I’m about to tell you is the truth, but I can’t be a hundred percent certain that some of it’s not spun from cobwebs. You get what I’m telling you?”

Reyes nodded. “I take your meaning.”

“Good.” Pennington settled back onto the empty recliner with a tired grunt. He leaned over, grabbed the bottle of whiskey, uncorked it, and refilled his glass. Then he nudged the open bottle across the small table toward Reyes. “I’d top off if I were you, mate. When you hear the story I’m about to tell . . . you’re gonna need it.”

The
Telinaruul
have wronged us for the last time.

The Shedai Wanderer made her telepathic declaration of war to the thousands of her kin who surrounded her atop a basalt mountain on a world of fire. All around them, a sea of molten rock churned and belched superheated gases into the tenuous atmosphere of the newly formed planet. Overhead, a penumbral moon blazed with its own inner fires and dominated the black sky, its infernal glow blotting out the cold sparks of starlight around its edges.

They have stolen what is ours, as if they had any right to our legacy.
She shared with her fellow members of the
Serrataal
her memories of the crystalline prison in which she had recently been snared.
Now they arm themselves with the weapons of our old enemies, the Tkon.
Waves of antipathy surged from the host gathered below her when they heard the name of their long-extinct foes.
If they master this instrument of terror, none of us will be safe. Even now, the
Telinaruul
hold captive none other than the Progenitor himself.

Shock and dismay coursed through the shared mindspace of their ad hoc Colloquium. Ripples of disbelief shimmered back to the Wanderer, and the Warden’s protesting response was steeped in shades of incredulity.
The Progenitor was a myth! A piece of lore to explain our forgotten origins.

He exists,
the Wanderer insisted, offering up her memory of fleeting contact with the creator of their race of interstellar dynasts .
The first and greatest of our kind lies yoked to the weapon our enemies would turn against us. We must punish these impudent upstarts who would call themselves our peers.

Resistance surged upward from the Adjudicator.
Do not be so quick to pit us against these new
Telinaruul,
he cautioned.
They grew mighty while we slept. Have you already forgotten the culling of our numbers on Avainenoran? Or the losses inflicted upon us by the Apostate’s treachery?

The Wanderer seethed.
I have forgotten nothing. But even alone, I cut through their so-called fortress with ease. Our numbers are more than sufficient to lay waste all the worlds they control and make their peoples ours to command.

Her declaration was met with hues of doubt, most profoundly from the Avenger. He elevated his essence above the throng to address the Wanderer.
Tell us, youngling: How would you have us face this new foe that dwells in deep space, light-years from the nearest Conduit? Should we permit them to capture us all and hope for a moment of providence such as the one that liberated you?

His question sparked a storm of panic. Fear washed over the Wanderer like a tide of poison and left her reeling and sickened. This was not the way of the Shedai, not the voice of the people she had known for hundreds of centuries. What had become of them? Had the Apostate been right to condemn them? Had the Shedai become moribund and degenerate? She refused to accept that. Marshaling her strength, she quelled the others’ rising tide of anxiety with an overpowering exhortation:
Silence!
The chaotic clamor fell away, and she continued.
We waged war against distant powers in ages past, and we will do so again. Our folly in the age before the Grim Awakening was that we contented ourselves with fighting through proxies. No more. I will see justice done upon the
Telinaruul
by my own touch. I will hear their wailing pleas for mercy, their desperate cries of surrender, and ignore them all as they perish in darkness and silence, in the cold void they should never have dared to cross.

Many of the
Serrataal
reflected the Wanderer’s aura, signaling their support for the war she was committed to wage. Yet islands of defiance remained. Radiating skepticism of her rhetoric were the Herald and the Sage—persons of consequence, former
members of the Maker’s inner circle, the elite corps within the elder caste of named Shedai, the Enumerated Ones.

Exuding rich tones of disdain, the Sage asked,
Why should we follow you to war? We pledged our loyalty to the Maker, not to you.

I, too, swore fealty to the Maker, but she is gone now, lost beyond the farthest Conduit. And the
Telinaruul
’s error that set me free also made me stronger than I have ever been. Perhaps even stronger than you, Old One.

The Sage’s essence darkened with resentment.
I will not give my oath to a youngling—not even one so obviously powerful as you.

His rebuff enraged the Wanderer.
Do
you
mean to lead us, then?

Seniority has always been our way,
the Herald interjected.
The Warden is the oldest of us who remain.

Taking the Herald’s cue, the Wanderer aimed her fury at the Warden.
And what say you? Will you sanction war for the sake of preserving order? Or counsel a galactic cycle of sleep while the
Telinaruul
turn our secrets against us and one another?

Anticipation swelled as the assembled minds focused themselves upon the Warden. Perhaps sensing the terrible gravity of the moment, he remained silent for a long moment while pondering his answer.
If the decision is mine to make,
he told the Wanderer,
I would have your answer to the Avenger’s question. How are we to strike at these new enemies? Do you propose we lure them into reach?

She mustered her confidence to lend her words the force of authority.
No. We will take our fight to the
Telinaruul
and slay them where they think themselves safest and most secure. We will crush their puny starships and rend their vaunted starbase into scrap. Then we shall free the Progenitor and let him show us how to cleanse the galaxy of these vermin—starting with the ones who call themselves
the Federation.

Massed on the black slope, the last of the Shedai hegemons
waited for the Warden’s pronouncement, for the declaration that would define the fate of their race, their legacy, and the galaxy at large. High above, the dark moon passed the midheaven in slow degrees; far below, a sea of magma and fire roiled beneath a Stygian sky. A distant eruption trembled the planet from its molten core to its obsidian crust. Then came the moment of decision.

The Warden was incandescent with pride.

To war.

Admiral Heihachiro Nogura stood alone, looking down through a pane of transparent aluminum that sloped outward, affording him an unobstructed view of a wide arc of Starbase 47’s main docking bay. Dozens of meters directly beneath his vantage point, the Starfleet scout vessel
Sagittarius
was tethered at the airlock for Bay 2. Its pristine hull was a testament to the skills of its chief engineer and the starbase’s repair personnel, who had expertly removed all trace of the many and varied horrors the fast little ship had endured in the past few years.

All so I can send it back out to get mauled again
.

Sending the ship and its crew into danger didn’t bother Nogura. If he’d had his way, the
Archer
-class starship would have been deployed weeks earlier. What made him livid was that, for reasons beyond his control, it was still here instead of on its way to one of the most vital missions it had ever been assigned, and that he had no other vessels suited to assume its role.

Distant footsteps echoed in the empty corridor and slowly drew closer. He glanced to his right, but the source of the footfalls was not yet visible, still somewhere beyond the long curve of the passageway that ringed the station’s core, one level above the cathedral-like main concourse of the docking level. Nogura preferred to admire the ships under his command from this more isolated location, a service level free of the random pedestrian traffic and bustling activity of the main level’s gangways. The service level was rarely visited by more than a handful of station personnel. Most of its interior sections were sealed off to serve as airspace above the cavernous repair bays that occupied more than a dozen decks inside the main core adjacent to the docking bay, which occupied the lower half of the station’s massive saucer.