He practically jumped off the pad onto the top deck. Cahow, who was manning the transporter console, recoiled instinctively at his energetic approach. “Welcome back, sir,” she said.
“Good to be back,” he said, scrambling over to the ladder. “Pardon me, have to get to the bridge!” She cocked a curious eyebrow at him but said nothing as he shimmied through the deck portal, planted his hands on the outside of the ladder, and slid down in one smooth motion. His boots struck the deck and produced a familiar, welcome metallic echo. He sprinted around the short curve of the main deck to the bridge.
The door slid open ahead of him, and he slowed, then lurched to a stop. Everyone on the bridge was too wrapped up in work to note his entrance.
“Range two hundred sixty-one million kilometers and closing,” Sorak noted dryly.
Nassir thumbed a comm switch on his chair’s armrest. “I need warp speed, Master Chief!”
“Workin’ on it, Skipper!”
“Captain,” Xiong said, “I’ve made a fascinating—”
“Bridy Mac,” Nassir said, ignoring Xiong. “Any contact with the Rocinante?”
“Negative, sir, still too much interference.”
Xiong was perplexed. The Rocinante? Pennington’s here? Putting aside his questions, he tried again to report his discovery on the planet. “Captain,” he said. “I need to tell you what I found on—”
“Later, Ming,” Nassir said. He looked over his shoulder at Sorak. “Are the shields up yet?”
Sorak flipped several switches and checked his display. “Affirmative, Captain. Operating at seventy-
one-point-three-percent power.”
“Helm,” Nassir said, “get ready to break orbit. Bridy, keep hailing the Rocinante.”
As the curve of the planet retreated from the main viewer, Xiong asked Nassir, “Sir, what’s going on?”
“The Klingon battle cruiser Zin’za just entered the system,” Nassir said. “And if we don’t go to warp in five minutes, it’ll rip us to shreds.”
25
Pennington followed Theriault inside the immense, hollow chamber at the end of the passage. He nearly collided with the redhead as she came to a sudden stop. Then he saw why.
Dominating the cathedral-like, nearly spherical enclosure was a machine larger and more bizarre than anything he had ever seen before. Its top and bottom halves were like mirror images of each other: hulking, twelve-pronged claws of shining obsidian. In the open space between them burned a globe of dark fire so intensely violet that it left a golden afterimage on Pennington’s retinas when he blinked and looked away. The entire space resonated with a macabre drone and a painful screeching.
“Give me the tricorder,” Theriault said, holding out her hand to him. He pulled the strap over his head and handed the device to her. As she began scanning the massive contraption, Pennington regained his wits long enough to raise his recorder and snap off several still images and some video.
A prismatic fury pulsed and scintillated inside the machine, revealing countless dark silhouettes twisting in its indigo flames. Pennington noted one form at the tip of each prong in the machine, while its center held a cluster of huddled shapes—all with the same unmistakable multilimbed anatomy.
“Tholians,” Pennington said as if it were an obscenity.
“I know,” Theriault said, watching the tricorder’s display as she slowly circled the machine. “They’re part of what makes this thing tick.” Just then the machine’s eerie disharmonies surged in volume and pitch, and high-frequency shrieks and wails surrounded them. Theriault winced momentarily and checked her tricorder again. “They’re in agony,” she said.
As if by reflex, Pennington replied, “Good.”
She turned her head and glared at him. “Excuse me?”
“What?” His temper flared. “I don’t care what Starfleet said about my story, the Tholians destroyed the Bombay.”
“That’s right,” Theriault said, her sweet demeanor replaced by righteous anger. “They did.” She pointed up at the fiery violet globe. “But those are sentient beings. I don’t care what your grudge is with their people, I’m not being rescued by someone who’d applaud torture.”
Shame warmed Pennington’s face as he stood accused in the purple glow of the machine’s fiery horrors. Her words stung him because they were true. Desperate voices, screeching like drill bits chewing through steel, pierced the machine’s funereal groan. He hung his head and made himself imagine the sufferings of the beings inside the flames. “You’re right,” he said to Theriault. “I let my anger get away from me. I was wrong…. Iapologize.”
“If you really want to say you’re sorry, you can help me find a way to free them,” Theriault said as she resumed scanning the towering artifact.
At a loss, he watched her. “How?”
“Look for some kind of control interface,” she said.
A majestic voice, like the roar of falling water married to the rumble of a stirring volcano, quaked the cavernous chamber and brought the pair to a halt. “Your efforts are for naught. Only the Serrataal can command the First Conduit.”
Pennington turned, suddenly cognizant of an amber glow casting his own shadow far ahead of him.
Looming over him and Theriault was a spectral giant rising from, and seemingly composed of, a polychromatic cloud of vapor. Bands of light, like miniature aurorae, orbited its body, and a golden radiance spread upward behind it. Its countenance was masked in a blinding shine brighter than the sun.
While the petrified journalist stood all but Gorgonized in the colossal entity’s gaze, Theriault stepped between them and spoke to it in a familiar tone. “Can you control it?”
“I can.”
“Then you can free the beings inside it,” she said.
A hard note crept into the radiant one’s mountainous baritone. “Not without causing great harm to the Colloquium….The Kollotaan are your enemies. Why do you wish them freed?”
Pennington cut in, “Because your machine is hurting them. They’re being held against their will and tortured.” He noted Theriault’s sidelong glance of approval. “We believe both those acts to be immoral. And we’re begging you for their freedom.”
Me, begging mercy for Tholians, Pennington marveled. To his surprise, he suddenly felt less burdened than he had in months.
The shining titan directed his attention at Theriault. “Do you also plead for the Kollotaan’s freedom?”
“Yes,” she said. “Can you return them to their ship?”
“I can,” he said after a brief pause. “And I will.” He ascended above their heads and drifted toward the screaming machine. “The others are coming. There is nothing more you can do here, little sparks. Flee to your friends. My partisans and I will do our best to shield your escape.”
Theriault grasped Pennington’s shirt sleeve and pulled him back toward the passageway that led out of the chamber. At its threshold, she turned back and said to the being, “Thank you.”
His last word was an irresistible command: “Go.”
Another skull-sized chunk of broken stone ricocheted off the top of the Rocinante. Quinn ducked by reflex and watched sandy debris scatter onto the ground behind him. Crouched under his ship, he made a few final adjustments to the impulse motivator, slammed the access panel shut, and locked it in place.