Prismatic ribbons of energy danced over the screaming machine, and a tingle that was part static electricity and part fear crept up Xiong’s back. A deep, almost subsonic throbbing pulsed through the deck like a leviathan’s heartbeat. Xiong imagined this might have been how it would have felt to be the first mortal to receive the gift of fire from Prometheus.
He engaged the command interface as Heffron and Humberg looked over his shoulder.
Heffron asked, “What are you doing?”
“Pinging all the Conduits in the Shedai network,” Xiong said as he worked.
As if fearful of the answer, Humberg asked, “What for?”
Xiong activated the new subharmonic function. “For this.”
On his workstation monitor, the constellation of several thousand blue dots began to dwindle, a few at a time at first, then by dozens, and then by scores. Heffron and Humberg both looked perplexed. She pointed at the display. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Xiong said with ruthless satisfaction, “that my program works.” He turned and met the bewildered stares of his peers. “Right now, all across the Taurus Reach, all the Conduits the Shedai ever made are self-destructing, shattering into dust. In a few minutes, there won’t be a single node of their former network left in the galaxy.”
Heffron looked horrified. “But what about all those planets?”
“It’s all right—with the array I was able to target just the Conduits. The planets are fine.” He ushered them toward the exit with broad movements of his arms. “Now go, both of you. Get to the beam-out point on Level Twenty, before the turbolifts fail.”
Humberg held Xiong at arm’s length. “Wait, what about you?”
“I need to shut down the array,” Xiong said. “I’ll be right behind you, I promise. Go.” Reassured by his lies, Heffron and Humberg scrambled out through the main hatchway and started running. Xiong locked the hatch behind them.
Alone at last with the array, Xiong regarded it with awe and contempt. He had spent years plumbing the secrets of the Shedai, plundering their legacy for the benefit of Starfleet and the Federation, and the end result had been this machine, a device of unimaginable power that he could wield to destroy distant worlds, but whose principal function stubbornly eluded him.
He had not yet figured out how to make it destroy its Shedai prisoners.
Realizing he wouldn’t have time to unravel that mystery in the scant minutes remaining to him, he returned to his workstation and armed the Vault’s self-destruct system.
Inside the terrestrial enclosure, the sky was burning.
Smoldering cracks marred the twilight, belying the illusion of placid heavens. Then the dusk flickered and faltered, revealing the gray metal interior of Vanguard’s upper saucer hull and its latticework of holographic emitters. A white-hot blister of half-molten duranium drooped inward, but there was no one left on Fontana Meadow to see it, no one left to hear the stentorian groan of hundreds of tons of overstressed metal, the incessant thunder of high-power detonations tearing their way through the 800-meter-wide dome.
A fearsome bolt of blinding energy burst through the hull, raining twisted slabs of scorched metal and charred bodies around its point of impact, just shy of Stars Landing. A shock front of superheated, ultracondensed air vaporized the cluster of buildings in a flash and scoured the deck of its manmade lawn. Driving a ring of debris ahead of it, the shock wave slammed against the station’s inner core and blasted in hundreds of transparent aluminum barriers.
Half a second later, the hunger of the vacuum asserted itself and tore the firestorm and every bit of loose matter out through the enormous, glowing-edged gash in the hull. Silence reigned within the sterilized interior of the saucer’s upper half, even as another half dozen shining blades of fire ripped through the hull and began carving it into scrap.
“Last torpedo’s away!” Terrell called out as he turned from the auxiliary tactical console to face the main viewer. The last photon torpedo aboard the Sagittarius streaked away and detonated in the midst of a tight formation of Tholian cruisers, whose course Terrell had deduced while watching them flee from Vanguard’s thinning barrage of phaser fire moments earlier. When the conflagration faded, nothing remained of the four ships except debris and ionized gas.
“Good shooting, Clark,” Nassir said. Then the image on the screen pinwheeled as zh’Firro steered the slowing scout vessel into another round of complicated evasive maneuvers.
The air in the bridge was thick with the sharp odor of burnt wiring and overheated circuits, and the normal low vibration imparted to the decks by the impulse engines had become a disconcerting clattering and banging, as if they were literally flying the ship apart, one hard turn at a time. Terrell headed aft to check Sorak’s targeting protocols and help the old Vulcan coordinate with Lieutenant Dastin, who was using the ship’s tractor beam to tow debris into enemy ships and drag enemy vessels in front of Vanguard’s still operational phaser batteries.
Theriault cried out, “The Panama’s breaking up!”
Turning on his heel, Terrell looked back in time to see the cargo transport splinter with fiery cracks, then break apart amidships before vanishing in a reddish-orange flash. Secretly, he was amazed they—and the Sagittarius—had lasted this long. The only reason we’re not dead yet is that the Tholians are throwing everything they have at the station, he reasoned.
Nassir sprang from his chair to stand over zh’Firro at the forward console. “Swing us around on a wider arc,” he said, leaning with one hand on the back of her chair. “We’ll need to cover the zones the Panama was—”
“Incoming!” Dastin cried.
Total darkness and a sound like the end of the world. Terrell felt himself hurled through the air, as if he’d leapt from a cliff. A blinding eruption and a thunderclap sent him hurtling back in the opposite direction as heat scorched his hair and shrapnel bit into his torso and limbs. He came to a halt when he struck something that he realized moments later must have been another person between him and a bulkhead. Darkness fell again, accompanied by a deep and muddy wash of indiscriminate sounds he couldn’t name.
He awoke in a daze to a faraway voice repeating, “Commander! Wake up!” The voice grew closer, louder, and sharper until he recognized it as Doctor Babitz’s. Struggling to push through the crushing ache in his skull, he blinked and saw the blond physician kneeling over him, her face lit by the glow of her medical tricorder. “The good news is, you don’t have a concussion. The bad news is, the rest of your body looks like it’s been through a blender.”
Behind her, Theriault watched over her shoulder and held a chemical emergency light stick whose green radiance made the bloody wounds on the left side of her face look black. “Sir, are you okay?” The science officer sounded frightened, but he couldn’t say if she feared for him, herself, the ship, or all of them at once.
“Help me stand up,” Terrell said.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Babitz said.
“It’s an order.” Theriault grabbed his right arm, and Sorak took hold of his left. Together, the petite Martian and the elderly Vulcan hoisted Terrell upright and leaned him against the aft bulkhead. Looking around as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw little at first except smoke hanging low and heavy over the bridge. The main viewscreen was gone, the forward bulkhead a charred mess. Then he saw the twisted, burnt remains of the helm console, and the two bodies lying on the deck beside it, both draped with blue emergency blankets: Nassir and zh’Firro were dead. He tried to swallow, only to find his mouth parched and tasting of ashes. “Damage report,” he croaked as he staggered to the command chair.
Babitz employed her most motherly voice. “Sir, you need to get to sickbay.”
“Later. We’re still in combat.” When he noticed the doctor’s challenging stare, he added with an extra measure of authoritativeness, “You’re dismissed, Doctor.”