A wail of terror issued from the Conduit and struck the Wanderer with overwhelming force. Driven by fear and reflex, she made her essence cohere when all she wanted to do was flee. The excruciating shrillness of the signal abated, and then the Wanderer knew what it was that she heard: the Song of the Progenitor! Its message was simple, pure, and clear. He was calling out to her, imploring her to answer his summons, to hie unto him without delay.
This was not the plan, she told herself, even as she felt her essence succumb to the Progenitor’s will. His voice was like that of no other Shedai; it was uniquely hypnotic and utterly compelling. Its beguiling melody transited the Conduit and called the other Serrataal.
I have opened the way, the Progenitor said. Gather now and be with me at last.
The Wanderer felt a surge of elation as she let the Progenitor’s voice guide her subtle body of consciousness into the signal stream. Perhaps he has turned their weapon against them!
She surrendered to the flow of the Song, expecting at any moment to recorporealize inside the Telinaruul’s risibly vulnerable fortress. Only as she passed over the Conduit’s final threshold did she detect, in the most ephemeral sense, that something was amiss.
But by then it was too late to save herself—or to warn the others who would follow.
Waves of panic crashed through the Progenitor’s formless prison. Thousands of Serrataal voices cried out in bitter fury, We have been deceived!
In their flashes of memory he beheld a vision of a molten world where they had massed, and though he had not heard any voice in aeons except that of the Wanderer, he recognized them all, each one by its special timbre and quality: the Sage, the Adjudicator, the Warden, the Herald, and countless others. Still first among them all was the Maker, whose confusion, he realized, had arrived separate from the others. Many of the old voices seemed absent, though, and he soon became aware that the missing were the Apostate and those whom he had counted as partisans.
So, the great war within our ranks came at last, the Progenitor deduced. He reasoned that the Maker and her faithful had prevailed. Or had they? Ages earlier, the Tkon had fashioned this prison of the mind with the Apostate’s aid; might this be his great revenge delivered at last?
It did not matter, he decided. At last, he and his progeny were reunited. Together, they would break free of their bonds and renew their patient conquest of the galaxy.
He concentrated, and projected his thoughts through the lattice of united minds.
Be silent. Be still.
Where he had expected obeisance, he found an onslaught of fury and rebellion. Why did you lure us here? they shrieked. You betrayed us! You’ve led us into bondage!
He quelled their storm of protest with a command like a supernova.
BE SILENT. BE STILL.
Their bonfire of rage was extinguished. Reverent awe took its place.
The Wanderer’s voice pronounced to the darkness, This is He of Whom I Spoke.
Thousands of Serrataal sought the guidance of the Maker. She opened her thoughts to the Progenitor, and he reciprocated, while the universe without form that surrounded them echoed with the voices of their scions, the elite of those born to rule creation.
Hundreds of voices wondered in unison, Can it really be He? Others insisted, This cannot be. He was only ever a myth, a tale of our forgotten past. Doubt rippled through the ranks of the Serrataal, tainting their enforced Colloquium.
Silence reigned as the Maker and the Progenitor ended their communion.
It is He, she declared.
All their minds opened to him then, yearning to know the shape of his thoughts.
I am He who was before all else, he proclaimed. He who begat you, tiny godlings. He whose mind is never at rest, whose dreams are the thunder of a million beating wings.
You are my crashing waves, but I am the sea.
You are my flashes of lightning, but I am the storm.
You are my constant starlight, but I am the darkness.
Together, we shall free ourselves from this abyss of damnation . . . and punish all who dare to think themselves our equals.
My God. Xiong could hardly believe the numbers flying across his computer screen. It’s a miracle the whole thing didn’t just melt down. “Containment status! Report!”
“Um . . .” Theriault was tweaking controls and struggling to get a final set of data points from her own panel. “Containment is holding—barely. All assigned nodes have been filled.”
Turning to his right, Xiong shot a hopeful look at Klisiewicz. “Contacts?”
“Nothing but Conduits,” Klisiewicz said. “All Shedai signatures clear.”
Hearing the news out loud made Xiong exhale with such relief that he almost felt deflated. He leaned forward on his panel, supporting himself with one hand while he used the other to palm the sweat from his forehead and push it back up into his hair. “Holy shit,” he said, almost laughing. “We did it! We nearly fried every circuit in here . . . but we really did it.”
Klisiewicz leaned over to steal a look at Xiong’s panel. “Good lord! Look at the power levels inside the array. Is that where it stabilized after we closed the circuit?”
“Yup,” Xiong said. “Our new guests are generating all that on their own. It’s completely off the charts. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
A comm signal beeped on Xiong’s panel. He thumbed open the channel. “Xiong here.”
Nogura’s voice was quieter than usual. “What happened down there, Lieutenant?”
“It worked, sir. We’ve got the Shedai.”
“So, you’ve recaptured it, eh?”
“No, sir,” Xiong corrected. “Not just the one Shedai. We got all of them.”
A long pause followed. “Are you certain?”
“Every last Shedai life sign is locked up inside the array.” He traded smiles with Theriault and Klisiewicz, then added, “Shall I send them your regards, sir?”
“By all means,” Nogura said. “And, might I add . . . well done, Ming.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll have a full report on your desk inside the hour. Xiong out.” He closed the channel. Half a second later, the Starfleet science personnel crowding the Vault erupted in wild cheers of victory and relief. Some embraced one another; a few clapped.
All that Xiong wanted to do was sit down. If that worked out, he had designs on returning to his quarters and sleeping for a few days, maybe a week. He slogged back to his office—which until very recently had been Doctor Marcus’s office, but before that had been his office, a fact that assuaged some of his guilt about reclaiming it—and sank into his chair. He let his body go limp and his jaw slack as he tilted his head back to admire the ceiling.
His chair slowly spun in a half circle, and as the office’s doorway drifted into his line of sight, he saw Lieutenant Theriault standing in it.
She seemed reluctant to intrude on him. “Sir?”
“Vanessa, we just saved the galaxy together. You can call me Ming.”
“Um, okay. I just wanted to point out that the energy being produced by the Shedai has leveled off, but if it goes much higher for more than a few minutes at a time, we might start to lose containment. It would probably just be a few nodes at first, but . . . well, it wouldn’t be good, is what I’m saying.”